Question

present to the class a case in which specifically AFIS was used in order to solve a crime.

Answer 1

AFIS is a type of biometric system that uses digital imaging to capture a fingerprint, which then can then be compared to a database of fingerprint records to help determine the identity of an individual.
AFIS is a biometrics system commonly used in law enforcement where sets of prints recovered in the crime scene were compared against the database of known and unknown prints.

30-Year-Old Murder Solved

Fingerprint Technology Played Key Role

The crime: In 1978, 61-year-old Carroll Bonnet was stabbed to death in his apartment. Police collected evidence, including latent fingerprints and palmprints from the victim’s bathroom (officers believed the killer was trying to wash off blood and other evidence before leaving the apartment). The victim’s car was then stolen.

The investigation: The car was found in Illinois, but after collecting additional latent prints, investigators couldn’t develop any new leads. The crime scene evidence was processed, and latent prints recovered from the scene and the car were searched against local and state fingerprint files. Investigators also sent fingerprint requests to agencies outside Nebraska, but no matches were returned and the case soon went cold.

The re-investigation: In late 2008, the Omaha Police Department received an inquiry on the case, prompting technician Laura Casey to search the prints against IAFIS (which didn’t exist in 1978). In less than five hours, IAFIS returned possible candidates for comparison purposes. Casey spent days carefully examining the prints and came up with a positive identification—Jerry Watson, who was serving time in an Illinois prison on burglary charges.

The case was officially re-opened and assigned to the cold case squad’s Doug Herout. Working with laboratory technicians and analysts, Herout reviewed the original evidence from the case, including a classified advertisement flyer with “Jerry W.” scribbled on one of the pages. Herout also discovered that Jerry Watson had lived only a few blocks from where the victim’s car was recovered.

And the discovery was made just in time—Watson was just days away from being released from prison.

Herout traveled to Illinois to question Watson and presented him with an order to obtain a DNA sample. Subsequent testing determined that Watson’s DNA matched DNA recovered at the crime scene, a finding that—combined with Watson’s identified prints—resulted in murder charges and a conviction. On October 17, 2011—33 years to the day that Bonnet’s body was discovered—his killer was sentenced to life in prison.