(Translation from the original text in Japanese) AUTHETICITY OF FINGERPRINT ON THE BILL IS CHALLENGED By Eizo Yamagiwa March 25, 1996 In the so-called "Pattaya counterfeit U.S. bills case" now on trial at Chonburi District Court, the only material evidence presented by the prosecution to suggest Yoshimi Tanaka's involvement in the affair has been his fingerprint. The prosecution claims that a fingerprint of Tanaka's right index finger was found on one of the 1,238 U.S. one-hundred-dollar notes, which, according to the prosecution, had been confiscated by the U.S. Treasury Department's Secret Service inspectors from a desk drawer in the office of Kodama International Trading Co., Ltd. in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We, the supporters of Defendant Tanaka, had posed a question on the authenticity of this evidence from the beginning. The Court subsequently came to exhibit a special interest in the issue by allowing the defence to take the defendant's fingerprints anew in the courtroom as well as photograph the fingerprint evidence held in the court's custody. We took these materials back to Japan and put them under various reviews and examinations, and finally came up with several expert opinions and reports. Through our study of these opinions and reports, we are confirmed in our belief, for the following reasons, that it is highly likely that the fingerprint allegedly found on the couterfeit bill was a 'copy'. (1) EVIDENCE WANTING IN AUTHETICITY In contrast to their very specific reference to the point of discovery such as "a desk drawer in Kodamaユs Phnom Penh office," the prosecution failed to present to the court any legal document which would have normally been required for such a search. Furthermore, there was no evidence describing any Cambodian law enforcement personnel being in attendance on the spot, while no photograph showing the search scene was submitted to the court, either. It appears that the 1,238 counterfeit bank notes came into being all of a sudden only when the Secret Service (S.S.) inspectors "disclosed" their discovery long after the date of the search. In response to the question of how they came to know the whereabouts of the counterfeit bills, one S.S. inspector testified that he had already known the whereabouts of the large amount of counterfeit bills via a phone conversation with Kodama before they visited his office in Phnom Penh. Another inspector told that they learned the whereabouts of the fake bills only when Kodama called Tanaka in the middle of the house search at Kodama International Trading Co., Ltd. Yet another inspector stated that it was only after Tanaka had fled from the search scene that they came to know the billsユ whereabouts via a phone conversation with Kodama. Thus, we face three incosistent statements from the three S.S. inspectors who were supposed to be in attendance on the search at Kodamaユ s Phnom Penh office. Strangely, however, none of Kodama's written statements mentions "the counterfeit bills stashed in the desk drawer." If the S.S. had really confiscated the fake notes from the desk in Kodama's office, they would have certainly made Kodama explain it, for it would have been a superb piece of material evidence to incriminate him. The desk, in which the 1,238 fake bills were allegedly found, was not for exclusive use by Tanaka but rather was being used commonly by the office staff. Its drawers were never locked; therefore, they would have been the last place for someone to keep valuable things in. In the first place, these 1,238 counterfeit bills do not constitute any part of the charges that the prosecution has brought against Tanaka in the present trial. They are nothing more than circumstantial evidence. (2) FINGERPRINT IDENTIFICATION WANTING IN RIGOROUSNESS The prosecution alleges that, as a matter of fact, the S.S. had found a total of 1,239 U.S. 100-dollar bills, of which one note was authentic. They detected fingerprints from 6 notes out of the 1,238 fake bills, and they reported that one of those 6 notes bore a fingerprint of Tanaka's right index finger. They also said that they were unable to identify the fingerprints detected on the remaining five bills. The authentic note was not put to fingerprint idientification. For some unknown reason, the vinyl bag that contained the 1,238 counterfeit bills was never examined for fingerprint detection, either. The 5 bills bearing unidentifiable fingerprints were examined on April 5, 1996 for fingerprint detection. And the one that had a fingerprint of Tanaka was put to examination on June 8, 1996. What puzzled us most was the fact that these two pieces of evidence carry different "Case Numbers." The former is identified as "Case# 119-711-1106", while the latter is assigned "Case# 429-711-19600-6." We wonder what might be the reason behind these two case numbers. According to the S.S., these 6 fake bills were forwarded to the U.S. soon after their confiscation in the beginning of February, 1996. Why did it take so long before they could assign the above Case Numbers in April and June of that year. Why did they have to assign different Case Numbers to the two pieces of evidence, despite their common origin? And further, why did it take 4 months before they could detect Tanaka's fingerprint on the bill in question? Tanaka's trial had already started in May, 1996. How on earth was the prosecution allowed to belatedly submit the bill with Tanaka's fingerprint to the court and to have the court adopt it as evidence? The S.S. inspectors' descriptions about their fingerprint detection process contradicted each other on many occasions, thus giving us the impression that their reports and testimonies were untrustworthy. When it comes to details such as "Who sent the 6 fake bills to the U.S.?", "How were they shipped?", "Specifically which materials were received by the U.S. headquarters?", and "What kind of examinations were conducted on the bills sent to them?", the American agency's descriptions fell short of any satisfactory consistency. (3) POLICE FINGERPRINT CARD--A SLIPSHOD JOB The FBI-format fingerprint file card that the police had prepared with the imprints of Tanaka's fingers shows "HAYASHI, SHOJI" in the space for name, and "July 9, (19)36" is shown under the birth date entry. It was revealed in the hearing held last September that there did exist another Japanese citizen with exactly the same name and birth date. Admitting that Tanaka was calling himself as "Hayashi" at the time of his arrest, what kind of a rational mind would dare to use the name and birth date for Tanakaユs fingerprint file card that represented another person with more than a 10 years' difference in age! There is also a section on Tanaka's fingerprint card where some entry was whited out. Why was it necessary for the police to erase it? (4) THE WAY TANAKA'S FINGERPRINT WAS IMPRINTED ON THE BILL Tanaka's fingerprint allegedly found on one of the 1,238 confiscated bills shows a peculiar imprint that lacks the tip of the finger (right index), while the the area near the first joint is much more clearly imprinted. Taking account of the particular location of the fingerprint on the bill, as well as assuming various ways of impressing the finger, we have come to a conclusion that, in actuality, it is next to impossible to get an imprint like the one shown on the bill. Also the imprint image of the fingerprint on the bill shows clear and thick lines, which suggest that the imprint is likely to have been made with relatively strong pressure, instead of briefly touching the note just like when you try to pick it up. (5) "CORRESPONDENCE" OF FINGERPRINTS In the testimony at Chonburi District Court on August 1, 1996, Mr. Donald C. Thirfate, a fingerprint expert of the U.S. Treasury Department, demonstrated that the image of the imprint on the bill and the imprint of Tanaka's right index finger recorded on the FBI-format police file card corresponded to each other even to minor details, by laying two transparencies of the enlarged fingerprint images on top of the other. However, we wonder if it is really common to see two fingerprints of the same person taken on different occasions give such a perfect correspondence between them. In an effort to get an answer to this question, we examined basic literature and materials concerning the issue of fingerprint identification, and came across the following descripition in a paper written by an expert: ".....It is not so uncommon to see in movies and TV dramas a visually convincing demonstration that two imprints of a suspect's fingerprints shown on transparencies come to overlap each other perfectly. This is, however, not the approach used in the actual identification work by the police. The reason is that the imprint image of soft, resilient surface of human fingers is subject to distortion, depending on the amount of pressure applied during impression and also how it is applied. And the diffenece in dimensions likely to occur over time (between the childhood and adulthood) will certainly defy a perfect matching between two fingerprints taken at different times of his life....." We took a special note of this discussion, asked experts to review, from all conceivable aspects, the relevant materials including some evidence held in the court's custody and conducted experiments to prove our points. Because of the softness and resiliency of human fingers, even the fingerprints of a same person taken under similar conditions on the same occasion are likely to exhibit discernible differences, particularly when the imprints are enlarged for matching. The imprints may become congruous to each other near the reference points being characteristic of or unique to the fingerprints in question; however, as you go farther away from those reference points, the lines and patterns of imprints start to deviate from each other. This is easily seen when you take a look at the imprints of the same finger of Tanaka's on the police fingerprint file card (FBI format). Through several experiments, we have confirmed that the imprint image made by rolling his finger sideway hardly overlaps the one that was made by pressing his finger down on the paper surface at the right angle were hardly congruent to each other. We also conducted similar experiments with fingerprints of several other people. The experiments always produced results similar to the case of Tanaka's fingerprint, i.e. the imprints obtained by rolling and by flat-pressing were far from congruent to each other. This clearly shows the susceptibility of human fingers to topological distortion. That is why the law enforcment of many countries around the world adopts an identification method in which several characteristic imprint patterns (which can be used as reference points where imprint lines bifurcate or are cut off, etc.) are picked out and their relative positions are ascertained. Then, one or more fingerprints are compared with the reference imprint to determine the matching between them. Each country requires its criminal identification personnel to come up with a certain number of matching reference points before they can declare a matching of two fingerprints. Japan, the United States and Germany require at least 12 reference areas to match; the United Kingdom 16; and France needs 17 places. We consulted with a fingerprint expert in Japan for the examination of Tanaka's fingerprints on the confiscated bill and on the police fingerprint file card. He is an ex-police officer with a long experience in the fingerprint section of the police' Criminal Identification Division. Though Mr. Thirfate had testified that the imprint detected on the confiscated bill and the imprint recorded on the police fingerprint card matched at 9 reference points, our expert told us that two of the 9 characteristic areas identified by Mr. Thirfate fell short of qualifying as 'reference points'. The ex-police officer pointed out that what these two areas showed was nothing more than slightly thick lines and could not be considered as characteristics inherent in Tanaka's right index finger, such as termination or bifurcation of lines. After having scrutinized the corresponding areas of another imprint taken from Tanaka's right index finger on a separate occasion, the ex-police officer also informed us that the thick lines were likely to have resulted from excessive amounts of ink captured on his finger. At any rate, you are not in a legitimate position to be able to declare that the imprint on the confiscated bill matches Tanaka's fingerprint, because they matched at only 7 reference points. What amazed us more was the fact that the enlarged images of the imprint allegedly found on the fake bill and of the imprint of Tanaka's right index finger recorded on the police file card (in FBI format) turned out to be surprisingly congruent to each other. Moreover, when we erased the letterings and punch hole from the scanner image of Tanaka's fingerprint of the police file card, we noticed that it resembled the imprint image on the bill to the extent that the two images exhibited a common uneveness in line thickness in some areas, supposedly resulting from unevenly applied ink. With the aid of chemical experts, we further went on to conduct experiments to transfer digitized images of fingerprints on paper by using, in place of a printer ink, artificially prepared, colorless liquids emulating human secretion from the skin. This was followed by another experiment to detect the invisible fingerprint images with the use of chemicals that would act upon the simulated secretion. Through this series of experiments we have realized that it is technically possible to reproduce, from a digitized imprint, a fingerprint on paper as if it were a real fingerprint. As a result of these experiments together with other cross examinations and analyses, we are convinced that the fingerprint alleged to have been detected from the confiscated bill was a copy obtained from a digitized image of Tanaka's fingerprint recorded on the police fingerprint file card (FBI format). It is our sincere wish that the Court will nullify the prosecution's fingerprint identification as unauthentic evidence, thereby passing a just and proper judgement in the present trial. (End) Press　meeting in Bangkock , 1999/03/25