## Facts

- Defendants were prosecuted in federal court for drug-trafficking offenses and related murders.
- The government planned to call FBI fingerprint examiners and a fingerprint specialist to link latent prints from crime scenes to the defendants.
- Defendants moved to preclude latent fingerprint identification evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert.
- In an earlier ruling, the court limited examiners to describing similarities between latent and known prints and barred source-identification “match” opinions due to insufficient reliability support.
- The government sought reconsideration and presented additional evidence at a supplemental evidentiary hearing, including proficiency-testing data.
- The fingerprint method at issue was ACE-V (Analysis, Comparison, Evaluation, Verification), comparing partial latent prints to known rolled exemplar prints.

## Issues

1. Whether the uniqueness and permanence of fingerprints are proper subjects of judicial notice under Federal Rule of Evidence 201.
2. Whether ACE-V latent fingerprint identification is sufficiently reliable under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, as applied through Daubert and Kumho Tire, to permit expert source-identification (“match”) opinions.

## Decision

- The court held that fingerprint uniqueness and permanence are sufficiently established to be judicially noticed under Rule 201.
- On reconsideration, the court reversed its earlier limitation and admitted ACE-V-based latent fingerprint identification testimony under Rule 702 and Daubert/Kumho.
- The court granted the government’s motion in limine to admit the evidence and denied defendants’ motion to preclude it.
- FBI examiners were permitted to testify that identified latent prints matched defendants’ rolled prints and to opine that defendants were the source of those latent prints.

## Legal Principles

- Under Rule 201, courts may judicially notice facts that are generally known or capable of accurate and ready determination; fingerprint uniqueness and permanence may be treated as such general propositions.
- Under Rule 702, expert testimony is admissible when it rests on sufficiently reliable principles and methods and is reliably applied to the case facts; the reliability inquiry follows Daubert and is flexible under Kumho Tire.
- Relevant reliability considerations include empirical testing, known or potential error rate, standards controlling technique operation, peer review/publication, and acceptance within a relevant expert community.
- A structured methodology with procedural safeguards (including independent verification) can support admissibility even if the method is not purely algorithmic, particularly when supported by proficiency-testing evidence indicating a low misidentification rate.

## Conclusion

The court admitted expert latent fingerprint source-identification testimony using ACE-V, taking judicial notice that fingerprints are unique and permanent and concluding that, on a supplemented record including proficiency-testing data, the method satisfied Rule 702’s reliability threshold under Daubert and Kumho Tire.


United States v. Llera Plaza, 188 F. Supp. 2d 549 (E.D. Pa. 2002)