A Borderline Identification, No Available Verifier, and a Trial Date
Examiner P is the only CLPE in a three-person latent print unit. L-7 is a 6 by 8 mm partial lifted from an aluminum window frame; P develops it, compares it, and reaches an identification to a suspect on seven features. The laboratory SOP requires blind verification by a second certified examiner before an identification may be reported. The nearest CLPE works at an agency 90 minutes away and has agreed to help but cannot take the case for eight days. Trial is in five days. A trainee with 14 months of experience has looked at the lift and agrees with P's identification, and the prosecutor suggests that the trainee's concurrence 'should be enough,' noting that a previous unverified report in the unit was never disciplined. P's supervisor is on annual leave and cannot be reached.
1. What are Examiner P's options, and which should be taken?
Read the worked answer
The SOP exists to prevent a single examiner's conclusion from becoming the laboratory's conclusion without independent review, and it does not contain an exception for trial dates or staffing. The trainee's concurrence is not verification under the SOP, because the trainee is not a certified examiner, and it is also not independent in the relevant sense: P trained the trainee and works beside them daily, so the trainee saw P's conclusion before forming an opinion. Accepting that concurrence would produce a file that looks verified while defeating the purpose of verification.
The defensible course is to send the case to the outside CLPE and to negotiate the timing, not the standard. Contact the outside examiner, explain the trial date, and ask whether the eight-day estimate can be shortened - many verifications take an hour once the material is in hand, and the delay may be scheduling rather than workload. Consider transporting the lift or high-resolution images with the case file. Simultaneously notify the prosecutor in writing that the report will issue after independent verification, with the expected date, so the deadline is managed rather than surprised.
What should not happen: self-verification by P, verification by the trainee, an informal opinion by phone or email treated as verification, or a report issued with an internal note that verification is pending. The prior unverified report is a precedent for a past failure, not authority for repeating it.
2. If the outside examiner agrees, what does the file need to show? If a deviation is authorized, what must it contain?
Read the worked answer
If verification proceeds normally, the file should show that the verifier was independent and blind: the verifier received the latent, the known prints, and the minimum case information, with no statement of P's conclusion and no indication of which candidate had been identified. Record who verified, when, what materials were supplied, and the verifier's own conclusion with its stated basis. A verification note that says only 'agrees' is weak; the note should say what the verifier relied on, so a later reader can see that the agreement was substantive.
If the laboratory's quality system permits a documented deviation, it must be authorized in advance by someone with authority - the quality manager or the laboratory director, not P alone - and it must record the reason, the scope, the compensating measures, and the plan for retrospective verification. It cannot be written after the fact to cover a report already issued, and it cannot be invented because the supervisor is on leave; if no one with authority is reachable, the answer is to wait.
P's own notes should record the deadline pressure and the prosecutor's suggestion accurately and without editorializing, because those notes may be discoverable. They are also the record that P declined to shortcut the process.
3. The outside examiner returns a conclusion of inconclusive, citing the limited area and seven features. What happens next?
Read the worked answer
The identification is not reported. The laboratory's conclusion becomes inconclusive, or the latent is described as not of sufficient value for individualization if that is the better characterization of the impression itself - those are different statements and the choice should reflect what the impression supports. P's own opinion does not outrank the verifier's; the point of verification is that disagreement stops the conclusion, not that it is outvoted.
Conflict resolution applies, but its purpose is to identify the technical basis of the disagreement, not to accumulate opinions until someone agrees. P and the verifier should discuss the specific features relied on, the clarity of the impression, and whether the seven features occupy a sufficiently small area to be discriminating. If a technical question remains genuinely open, a third certified examiner may be asked - once, blind, and with the disagreement framed as a question about the impression rather than as a search for a favourable answer. Shopping the case until two of three examiners agree is a serious ethical breach and would be indefensible in testimony.
If the conclusion stays inconclusive, the prosecutor is told that the latent did not yield an identification and that no print association will be offered, with the reason stated in technical terms: limited area, limited feature set, insufficient for individualization. The trial date does not change the answer, and the examiner should say so plainly rather than leave room for the expectation that more time or a different examiner would produce a match.