History of Fingerprint and Will West Case

History of Fingerprint and Will West Case

A strange story took place during 1903 and there should be only few people in forensic field, who do not know the story of Will and William West, two prisoners in Leavenworth, Kansas.

A prisoner by the name of Will West arrived at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. After seeing his mug shots, the jail assistant took one glance at the photographs and said she had seen him previously. Mr. West clarified he had never been to Leavenworth, and that she was couldn’t have seen him before.

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The Jail assistant, persuaded that she was right, gathered Mr. West’s Bertillon measurements (the identification proof technique used to identify detainees up until this case) and burrowed through the files of prisoners. Frightfully, she pulled out a record that without a doubt was the substance of the man remaining before her.

However, it is clear that Mr. West is telling the truth and he had never been to Leavenworth, and was normally concerned. How had his photograph wound up in the records of the prison? As it turned out, there was another detainee with the exact measurement as Mr. West who was already there in the prison serving a life sentence. In the event that that wasn’t sufficiently odd, his doppelganger was additionally named William West.

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The two men were not related at all, and law authorization immediately understood that a more solid technique for identification was necessary. The case of Will and William West changed the substance of crime scene investigation. Fingerprinting soon became the standard and trusted method for identifying criminals.

As a result of these two men, people never need to stress over going to jail basically for having a similar face and physical qualities of another known crook. Fortunately for every one of us, our unique fingerprints will never allow for another case of mistaken identity.

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Why Fingerprints are unique?

Fingerprints are one of the good source of personal identification. The science of fingerprint identifications stands out among all other forensic sciences for many reasons, following are the few:

• Has helped governments worldwide for over a century by providing accurate identification of a person.
• Established the first forensic professional organization, the International Association for Identification (IAI), in 1915.
• Continues to expand as the primary method for accurately identifying persons in government record systems, with hundreds of thousands of persons added daily to fingerprint repositories worldwide.
• For more than a century, has remained the most commonly used forensic evidence worldwide.

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