Fingerprints are reliable sources of proof in a crime. Due to the exceptional characteristics of skin, nonetheless, it is difficult for the investigators to effortlessly point out a suspect. Skin possesses a number of exclusive traits that distinguish it from other specimens examined for latent prints. Skin tissue grows and continuously repairs itself, shedding old cells that might enclose the imprint of an assailant's grip. (Futrell, Ivan Ross (1996)) Its malleability allows movement and, hence, possible distortion of fingerprints.
As the skin regulates the body's temperature and excretes waste matter during perspiration, latent prints can be washed away. Additionally to these ordinary changes, the skin of homicide victims often is subjected to many harsh conditions, such as mutilation, bodily fluids, the weather, and decomposition after death. Further, during crime scene processing, many people might handle a body while removing it from the scene, which also can wipe out existing fingerprints or perhaps add new ones to the corpse's skin. (Futrell, Ivan Ross (1996))
The FBI has been caught up in research on methods to produce individual latent prints on human skin for many years. In the early 1970s, FBI scientists reexamined accessible methods by means of cadavers at a chief university and the Virginia State Medical Examiner's Office in Richmond, Virginia. A good number of these cadavers had been preserved. To create prints, these researchers applied a coating of baby oil and petroleum jelly to their hands and then touched areas of skin on the cadavers.
At timed intervals, they then challenged to extend these latent prints, using chiefly the iodine/silver transfer method. This technique has five steps: heating iodine in an iodine fuming gun, directing the fumes onto the skin, laying a thin sheet of silver on the skin, getting rid of the silver plate and, lastly, exposing the........
