The certain, and even transcendent, epistemic status granted to
DNA evidence is quite remarkable, though not unprecedented.
Well before DNA profile evidence was admitted into criminal trials
in the U.K., U.S., and many other nations, fingerprint evidence had
attained ‘factual’ status in criminal trials. Jennifer Mnookin distin-
guishes the ‘factual’ status assigned to fingerprint evidence from
the evidentiary status of expert ‘opinion’.
31
This status was, so to
speak,
de facto
rather than formally codified or based on any specific
legal ‘test’. Mnookin quotes from the judge in the
1917
trial
People v.
Sallow
, ‘The witness does not testify. The physical facts speak for
themselves; no fears, no hopes, no will of the prisoner to falsify or
to exaggerate could produce or create a resemblance of her finger
prints or change them in one line, and therefore there is no danger
of error being committed or untruth told.’
32
She quotes another
judge in a 1930 case, who asserts, ‘fingerprinting is based on the
law of nature, or upon a universally recognized physical fact.’