Background
French G. Lee was convicted of two burglaries of a Moorestown restaurant that occurred in the early morning hours of September 28 and September 30, 2018. In each incident, security footage captured an intruder in a distinctive two-tone hooded sweatshirt at the cash register. Police lifted five latent fingerprints from the register and nearby surfaces. Using the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) and the four-step ACE-V method (Analysis, Comparison, Evaluation, and Verification), Lieutenant Michael Wiltsey — qualified as an expert in fingerprint identification — concluded all five prints matched defendant’s. Fingerprint evidence was the only evidence directly tying Lee to the crimes.
Before trial, defense counsel moved to bar the fingerprint expert testimony, relying primarily on two authoritative federal reports: the 2009 National Academy of Sciences report Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward and the 2016 President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) report on forensic feature-comparison methods. Counsel identified specific concerns about ACE-V, including examiner-to-examiner variability, the absence of uniform identification thresholds, documented error rates (as high as 1-in-18 in one study), unverified assumptions about fingerprint uniqueness and permanence, and confirmation bias built into the verification step. The State responded that fingerprint evidence had been admitted in New Jersey for over a century and satisfied the Frye v. United States general-acceptance standard, pointing to federal circuit court decisions upholding ACE-V.
The trial court denied the motion without holding an evidentiary hearing, reasoning that no New Jersey case had found ACE-V unreliable and that numerous federal courts had approved it. A jury convicted Lee on both burglary counts, and he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. The Appellate Division reversed, finding three errors: failure to hold a pretrial Rule 104 hearing on fingerprint reliability, failure to question prospective jurors about fingerprint bias during voir dire, and improper lay-opinion testimony by the detective and restaurant owner about whether the surveillance videos depicted the same person in the same clothing. The New Jersey Supreme Court granted the State’s petition for certification.
The Court’s Holding
Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Rabner held that the trial court abused its discretion by admitting fingerprint expert testimony without first conducting a hearing under N.J.R.E. 104 to assess its reliability. Under N.J.R.E. 702, the proponent of expert testimony bears the burden of establishing, among other things, that the field is “at a state of the art such that an expert’s testimony could be sufficiently reliable.” Trial courts serve as rigorous gatekeepers against unsound science, and that obligation required the trial court to meaningfully evaluate the defendant’s specific, documented challenges — not merely defer to historical practice or out-of-state rulings. The Court noted that no published New Jersey decision has ever examined fingerprint reliability in depth at an evidentiary hearing, and that it is unclear how thoroughly out-of-state cases probed the concerns raised by the NAS and PCAST reports.
Rather than reverse the conviction outright, the Court appointed a Special Adjudicator to conduct a plenary evidentiary hearing. The Special Adjudicator is directed to determine: (1) whether the fingerprint evidence satisfies the reliability standard established in State v. Olenowski I, 253 N.J. 133 (2023) — which replaced the Frye general-acceptance test with a Daubert-informed inquiry into methodology, error rates, peer review, and accuracy in practice; (2) if reliable, whether any limitations or guardrails should govern admission; and (3) if so, what those limitations should be, including possible revisions to model jury charges on fingerprint evidence.
The Court retained jurisdiction and expressly declined to address the Appellate Division’s two other findings — on voir dire questioning and lay-witness narration of surveillance video — until after the Special Adjudicator’s report is received. Because fingerprint evidence was the sole basis for conviction, the Court stated that if the evidence is ultimately found unreliable, the conviction cannot stand; if found admissible, the remaining issues will be addressed at that time.
Key Takeaways
- Admitting fingerprint expert testimony over a substantive reliability challenge, without holding a N.J.R.E. 104 hearing, is reversible error in New Jersey — historical acceptance and favorable out-of-state rulings are insufficient substitutes for actual gatekeeping.
- New Jersey now applies the Daubert-derived reliability factors from Olenowski I (2023) to criminal expert testimony, replacing the prior Frye standard; forensic evidence once admitted under Frye must be re-evaluated if its scientific reliability has materially changed.
- The Court has appointed a Special Adjudicator — rather than conducting the reliability inquiry itself or ordering a new trial immediately — leaving the fate of the conviction expressly contingent on the hearing’s outcome.
- Defense counsel challenging forensic methods and prosecutors defending them should coordinate in advance with the Public Defender’s forensic science unit and the Attorney General, respectively, to be prepared to present witness testimony at any required hearing.
Why It Matters
This decision signals that New Jersey is prepared to subject fingerprint analysis — one of the most widely used and longest-accepted forms of forensic evidence — to genuine scientific scrutiny under its post-Olenowski reliability framework. The appointment of a Special Adjudicator to conduct a comprehensive hearing on the NAS and PCAST report findings is extraordinary and could produce the first in-depth published examination of ACE-V reliability in New Jersey courts. The outcome could reshape how fingerprint evidence is admitted statewide, including whether jurors receive new instructions about the method’s documented limitations.
Beyond fingerprints, the ruling reinforces that courts may not insulate long-accepted forensic techniques from reliability review simply because they have a lengthy track record. Defense practitioners now have a clearer basis to demand Rule 104 hearings whenever credible scientific literature raises specific, documented questions about a forensic methodology’s validity — and prosecutors must be prepared to affirmatively satisfy their burden of proof on reliability, not merely invoke precedent.