- The Trial - Page 192

Dunaway's car and now testified about the potential value of partial prints.  Truby said that even with fewer than seven points of identification, it was sometimes possible to "eliminate" a partial print—that is, to show that it did not match the known sample print.  A single characteristic, such as an S curve in the whorls, would be definitive if it did not appear in the same place on the sample print: "Even though there's only three or four or five characteristics, you could eliminate that print because that one characteristic is missing.  It's obvious it couldn't be made by the same print.  That one thing is missing, it doesn't correspond."

Hadley indirectly alluded to the testimony of Ruby Lee Ross, the FBI fingerprint expert who had destroyed the prints from the .357 magnum revolver because they had fewer than seven points.

Q: Now, Mr. Truby, have you ever, in working on a case, developed prints and then destroyed them if they had less than seven points?

A: No, sir.  I keep them in my files?

Q: You keep all the prints you develop, don't you?

A: Until I eliminate them or identify them, yes.

Q: And even if you consider them of limited value you keep them, don't you?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Such as the ones on the tissue in this case, is that not correct?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: The first photographs you developed were of limited value, weren't they?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: But you nonetheless kept those prints?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: Do you consider it good practice to destroy prints just because they merely are of limited value, sir?

A: I don't personally consider it good practice, sir, and I don't do it.

Again the pace of testimony was rapid.  For the second straight day,  Hadley ran out of witnesses early in the afternoon.

But the court had business out of the hearing of the jury.  One juror, a black woman named Johnestine Young, had told Judge Paul in a note that her long-planned group vacation to Canada was now a week away; she would lose a $400 deposit if she didn't take the trip as scheduled.  Eagan and Hadley conferred with the judge, and they all agreed that she should be excused if there was a chance that her attention might be elsewhere.

The first alternate juror, who would replace her, was a young white college student named James Roberts.  In voir dire he had struck Hadley and the