Myth of Fingerprints (Season 12, Episode 7)
Premise: The death of a drug dealer leads to a man trying to prove his brother’s innocence, and the inquiry exposes a fingerprint examiner whose testimony sent two innocent men to prison in the case that made Van Buren a lieutenant.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 7
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin), Lt. Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Serena Southerlyn (Elisabeth Röhm), DA Nora Lewin (Dianne Wiest)
- Guest stars
- Diana Scarwid as Lisa Russo, Jeremy Davidson as Luke Campbell, James Colby as Bobby Campbell, Larry Bryggman as defense attorney Rowan, Ginnifer Goodwin as Erica
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Story: Eric Overmyer; Teleplay: Terri Kopp & Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Investigation
“Myth of Fingerprints” opens with the death of James Foley, 36, whose girlfriend finds him in his apartment with a fatal head wound from a television set that came down on him during a fight. Blue fibers of the kind used in uniforms are found on his pants and the windowsill. Briscoe and Green first look at Terry Fullmer, the boyfriend of the mother of Foley’s young son, who clashed with Foley at family court, but his shirt does not match.
Prints from the apartment lead to ex-convict Jack Lynch, who says Foley was caught with a large amount of cocaine yet got probation. Narcotics detectives admit Foley was their informant, and Glenn Edwards, a dealer he testified against, tells the detectives at Sing Sing that Foley committed a killing twelve years earlier for which inmate Bobby Campbell is serving time. Prison logs show Bobby’s younger brother Luke visited both men. Luke, a security guard whose fingerprints are on file with his employer, admits going to Foley’s apartment to find proof of Bobby’s innocence and says the two fell when Foley grabbed him by the neck.
Luke claims self-defense, and his lawyer plans to retry the old case. Van Buren led that investigation as a narcotics detective. The eyewitness, Brenda Warren, now sober and married, refuses to cooperate, and the lab’s file was lost in a flood. McCoy sends photos of the original print to the FBI rather than to lab supervisor Lisa Russo, Van Buren’s longtime colleague. The FBI finds no basis for Russo’s six-point match, links a print from the victim’s car to Foley’s frequent partner Ray Gifford, and turns up seven false matches in 20 of her old cases.
The Trial
Bobby is freed, the case against Luke is dropped, and Warren is picked up for perjury. Van Buren, who long trusted her friend, arrests Russo for manslaughter in the death of Bobby’s co-defendant, Larry Martin, who was stabbed by another inmate. At trial Bobby describes his lost years, and FBI Agent Foster calls Russo’s errors knowingly false, though defense attorney Rowan gets him to concede that fingerprint analysis has unknown error rates.
Russo defends her judgment and her 19 years of experience. McCoy shows she repeatedly took over cases after other examiners refused to declare a match, and under pressure she insists the men were guilty and everyone knew it.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Russo of second-degree manslaughter. Van Buren tells Briscoe she fears the case has tainted her promotion, then visits Russo in jail. Russo says she simply gave detectives the results they wanted, calls Van Buren a hypocrite and shouts for the guard.
Why it stands out
- Van Buren is at the center of the case, since the conviction now in question paved the way for her promotion to lieutenant.
- The episode questions the science of fingerprint matching, noting that New York City set no minimum number of matching points and left the call to each examiner.
- Ginnifer Goodwin appears in a small early role as Erica.