The admissibility of fingerprint evidence: An African perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Fingerprint analysis involves the comparison of a latent print and an exemplar using the standard ACE-V methodology. The uniqueness and persistence of fingerprints form the basis of their use as unique human identifiers. Despite its usefulness in criminal investigation, fingerprint analysis has been criticised for its likelihood to, sometimes, occasion avoidable miscarriages of justice. The causes of error in fingerprint analysis include cognitive bias, non-conforming regulatory standards, and ethical misconduct. This article analyses the types and causes of error in fingerprint analysis vis-à-vis the common law requirement in Nigeria and other Commonwealth countries to prove criminal charges beyond reasonable doubt. Finally, it discusses the peculiar challenges of using forensic fingerprint analysis in the criminal justice system in developing countries and explores possible ways of solving these problems.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.046 | 0.070 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.047 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".