A review of the FBI’s handling of the Brandon Mayfield case (March 2006). The Office of the Inspector General focuses on the causes of the fingerprint misidentification in the Mayfield case and proposes possible solutions to prevent future fingerprint analysis errors.
The enormous size of the IAFIS database and the power of the IAFIS program can find a confusingly similar candidate print. The Mayfield case demonstrates the need for particular care in conducting latent fingerprint examinations involving IAFIS candidates because of the elevated danger of encountering a close non-match. p. 7