A federal judge has allowed fingerprint evidence to be admitted in the death penalty case against a Baltimore man accused of a carjacking and murder outside Security Square Mall in Baltimore County.

Judge Catherine Blake’s ruling effectively overrules the controversial ruling by a Baltimore County judge denying fingerprint evidence in the case last year.

“For reasons to be more fully explained in a memorandum opinion, I have concluded that no further evidentiary hearing is required for the court to find fingerprint identification testimony admissible in this case,” Blake wrote in a brief ruling filed Tuesday.

Friday, Sept. 4, in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, attorneys for Brian Rose, 23, tried to convince Blake that fingerprints are far from the “100 percent” full-proof science they’re often believed to be.

“There have been no tests, no studies, no empirical evidence that really supports” fingerprints as a forensic science, said Bradford McCullough, one of Rose’s attorneys.
 
Rose is facing the death penalty in the 2006 carjacking and slaying of merchant Warren Fleming, 31, outside Security Square Mall, where Fleming owned a Cingular Wireless store.

Fleming was meticulous about washing his car, and Rose’s were the only fingerprints found on the vehicle after the man’s death, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Purcell.
 
Purcell said Rose even admitted the fingerprints were his in a conversation with his mother in which he explained how they got there.
 
“There’s never, ever been anywhere where two people had the same fingerprint,” the prosecutor said.
 
Groundbreaking ruling

The prosecution of Rose began in Baltimore County Circuit Court, but hit a major road bump last year — causing federal prosecutors to step in and indict the case.
 
In a groundbreaking ruling in October 2008, county Judge Susan Souder disallowed prosecutors from using fingerprint evidence against Rose, a decision Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger called “stunning and radical.”

“This (judge) stands alone in American jurisprudence in ruling that fingerprint identification evidence is not reliable enough to be admitted,” Shellenberger wrote in court papers.
 
In her ruling, Souder refereed to the FBI’s “infamous, erroneous” 2004 misidentification of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield as an Algerian terrorist.

Mayfield was falsely accused of the March 11, 2004, terrorist bombing of commuter trains in Madrid after the Spanish National Police recovered fingerprints from a plastic bag containing explosive detonators, and the FBI misidentified him as a suspect.

Fingerprint evidence eventually cleared Mayfield, but the high-profile misidentification embarrassed the federal agency and called into question the science of fingerprints in general.

“We found a series of systemic issues, particularly in the FBI laboratory, that helped cause the errors in the Mayfield case,” U.S. Department of Justice investigators wrote in a report about the case.

Not ‘100 percent’ foolproof

At Friday’s motions hearing, McCullough, who argued Rose’s position, said that the Mayfield case is the perfect example of why fingerprint evidence should not be allowed in court cases.
 
“Following this process does not ... produce reliable results,” McCullough said.
 
Blake said she knew that fingerprint evidence is not “100 percent” and that “there’s always some sort of error rate and people make mistakes.”
 
Purcell said the few errors in the vast body of fingerprint evidence are “statistically insignificant,” though he conceded: “It’s not insignificant if you’re Mr. Mayfield.”

Purcell said Souder’s ruling is out of step with most judges and cases, and that the judge herself has been known to admit the evidence.
 
“I hear that fingerprint evidence is being used in that courtroom this week,” he said on Friday.
 
“I’m not going to get into the merits or demerits of Judge Souder’s decision,” Judge Blake responded. “She’s a perfectly fine judge, but we’re hearing this in this court.”
 
This story has been updated.

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