The fingerprint affair is alive and well and living in the Department of Justice

THE FINGERPRINT AFFAIR has now assumed far larger proportions than hitherto suspected and has raised quesstions of the utmost seriousness not alone about the conduct of very senior Garda officers, past and present, but of the Department of Justice itself.

The Department has been placed in the centre of the affair by its minister, Gerry Collins, who has gone out of his way to refute implications made about it in previous issues of Magill. But in doing, so, the Minister has raised yet further questions and, far from dispossing of the affair, has highlighted it still further.

Because of the complexity of the issues involved, it is necessary yet again to trace the affair back to its origins,

A helmet was found at the scene of the assassination of the British ambassaador on July 21, 1976, It was taken to the fingerprints section of the Technical Bureau of the Gardai and examined there by an experienced fingerprint exxpert, Dt. Sgt. Michael Diggin.

He could trace no mark on the hellmet and left a note to that effect for his superior, Dt. Insp. William Byrne, The latter later that night examined the hellmet and came up with a quite clear finnger mark (a finger mark is what is left casually on an object, while a fingerrprint is what is taken under supervised circumstances by fingerprint experts for record purposes),

Byrne ordered a search of the fingerrprint files to try to identify the mark he had discovered on the helmet but after a search by several officers for several weeks, no matching fingerprints were found.

About this time the name of a suspect in the case, Martin Taylor, was floated within the Technical Bureau by members of the Investigation section. Byrne's closest associate in the fingerprints section, Dt. Sgt. John Garavin, examined Taylor's fingerprints, a copy of which had been acquired from the RUC in connection with another matter, and concluded that Taylor's fingerprints matched the mark on the helmet.

There is no dispute about the facts of the matter up to this point. However the next stage in the saga is of critical importance, This is whether Byrne and Garavin decided that their identification was a conclusive one or not. They mainntain now that their identification was innconclusive, subject to the need to get a better set of photographs of Taylor's fingerprints from the RUe Others in the fingerprint section hotly dispute this, alleging that Byrne stated repeattedly that the identification was concluusive and that he was prepared to go to court and tesitfy to the identification, ,

Certainly Byrne did take a step then which lends considerable weight to the contention that he regarded the identiification as conslusive. He prepared a chart of the mark and the fingerprints, identifying 12 identical characteristics. This kind of chart is always prepared prior to a court appearance and the practice of preparing such a chart is unnknown when an identification is innconclusive. In spite of this however Byrne and Garavin now claim that the chart was prepared merely to assist them in identifying again the possibly identical characteristics,

This explanation seems unlikely however as it was apparent to virtually every other senior fingerprint officer in the section that the identification was clearly incorrect. Far from there being 12 actual or possible identical characcteristics, there were only two - the other 10 were clearly incorrect, there being no room for doubt certainly about seven of them,

In Ireland, 12 identical characteristics must be present before a fingerrprint expert can give evidence in court, except in very rare circumstances, Howwever experts are sure of an identification once six or seven characteristics are found to be identical.

The error was first discovered by the officer who first examined the helmet, Diggin. He passed along the copies of the mark and the fingerprints to the second most senior man in the section, Dt , SgL Pat Corless and he too agreed that the identification was wrong. Corless approached Byrne about the matter but the latter baldly refused to discuss the technical aspects of the matter with him and asserted that he, Byrne, was prepared to go to court on the matter.

Corless raised the matter with the head of the Technical Bureau, Chief Superintendent Tony McMahon but the latter was uninterested saying that he was prepared to accept the word of the head of the fingerprints section, Subsequently McMahon agreed to hold a meeting in his office of all the senior officers in the fingerprint section, All but Byrne and Garavin agreed that the identification was wrong but still, Byrne, with the acquiesence of Mac

Mahon, persisted in maintaining that it was correct and that he would go to court on the matter.

It is important here to attempt to disentangle what where the actual intentions of Byrne were and what he initially told his superiors about the initial identification as opposed to what he was maintaining for the sake of bravado in front of Corless with whom he had a poor working relationship for some time.

It is possible that Byrne's initial idenntification was inconclusive in his own mind and that he so informed his superriors who then passed that message along to the Department of Justice and that his subsequent protestations of certainnty were merely part of his continuing battle of personalities with Corless.

 It is also important to state, however beelatedly this comes from Magill, that most people who know Byrne intiimately are unanimous in believing that he is honest and incapable of deliberaately perjuring himself to help convict an innocent person. However many of these same people acknowledge that his judgement was suspect and that he was inclined to "rushes of blood to the head", which very probably was what happened in the British ambassador case.

But the theory that Byrne had perrsonally made an inconclusive identifiication, had so informed the authorities but had pretended to his colleagues that the identification was conclusive doesn't really hold up.

In the first place there are the charts which are invariably used for court purrposes and which strongly suggest that Byrne himself was certain of the connclusive nature of the identification.

Secondly, if Byrne had informed his superiors that the initial identification was inconclusive, why didn't his immediate superior, MacMahon, refer to this factor when the matter was repeatedly raised with him by Corless and, on one occasion, in front of all other senior officers in the fingerprint section?

Thirdly, there is evidence that Byrne exhibited little caution in other identiifications which were subsequently prooved wrong and, in the light of these, it would have been uncharacteristic of him to have stated that the identification in the British ambassador case was inconnclusive.

But there is an even more compelling point. All the enquiries made into the matter - by the DPP, Commissioner McLaughlin and the Minister himself `acknowledge that Byrne did not adhere to the rigid standards which ought to be. maintained in all cases involving fingerprint evidence. Quite clearly, if Byrne had originally asserted that his identification was inconclusive, then the question of "the rigid standards" didn't arise for he would have been stating that his identification, because of its inconnclusive nature, couldn't be used as eviidence.

So either Byrne made a conclusive initial identification and was thereby guilty of not maintaining the required rigid standards, or he made an inconnclusive identification and was therefore not guilty of failing to maintain rigid standards. It cannot be as Gerry Collins maintains that Byrne both made an innconclusive identification and was guilty of not maintaining rigid standards.

The fact is that there is quite weighty evidence that Byrne's identification was conclusive and here rises the crux of the new development: If Byrne made a connclusive identification, why would the Department of Justice have been inforrmed that the identification was inconnclusive. Surely the natural tendency of the Gardai in such cases would be to exaggerate rather than down play the breakthrough in such a sensitive case?

It is frankly incredible that if Byrne made a conclusive identification that the Department of Justice would have been informed that it was inconclusive.

Yet Gerry Collins states categorically that: "the official record in my Departtment proves that, when the Department was informed by the Garda Siochana in October 1976 that a fingermark disscovered near the scene of the crime had been linked with a particular person, the Department was at the same time innformed by the Gardai that the identification was subject to a reservation or qualification related to the need to get a better set of prints with which to commpare the mark that had been found.
In referring to the official record I am reeferring to a note that was made and acted on before any question arose of any other member of the Technical Bureau challenging the identification. May I stress that the record was not only made but that the information was acted on at the time, so the authenticity of the record, as a record made conntemporaneously, cannot be questioned."

We asked Mr. Collins how he could be sure that the official record was a true and contemporaneous one. He repplied by letter: "the note in question was communicated to some persons (even though a small number) not in my Deepartment and that was also done (and could be proved to have been done) beefore the first challenge to the identiification. There therefore must be reecords in certain other places or receipt of that note before the critical date. I am not free to reveal what those other places are but what I can tell you is that I am not just the only person who knows this". (The italics are his.)

So the action referred to in his Dail statement which supposedly authentiicates the validity of the record as true and contemporaneous was a communiication to some other place of that information. 

What other place could this be? Sureely one of four: The Department of the Taoiseach, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the British police. By far the most obvious of these is the DPP's office, especially as he was interested in Martin Taylor at the time in connection with another matter. He was contacted at the time but not by memo or letter, just verbally. Unnfortunately he cannot recall what he was told precisely and doesn't rememmber whether he was told that the identiification was inconclusive. Certainly there is no record in the DPP's office about the contact.

But Mr. Collins is strangely uncertain of the corroboration of the authenticity of this critical document in his Departtment. One would have thought that on a matter as critical as this he would .have checked that there were records in these "certain other places" or receipt of that note before the key date, but the wordding of his letter to us ("there therefore must be records") is curiously vague.

The significance of all this is th~t if Byrne's initial identification was connclusive and if, as seems virtually innevitable, the fact of this conclusive idenntification was communicated to the Department of Justice, it is odd, to say the least, that there now exists in the Department a record stating that the identification was inconclusive.

Very serious questions remain unnanswered about the whole affair and because of the welter of allegations that have proliferated against the Gardai and officials of the Department of Justice, not just in relation to the fingerprint affair, but also iri relation to Garda bruutality, other Garda activity and prison conditions, it is better that the whole matter be brought out into the open

Incidentally, Byrne's identification, conclusive or otherwise, was acknowleddged to be wrong, when Diggin discoverred that the mark on the helmet was made by himself.

There are further reasons for disquiet about the Minister's Dail statement on May 23 in relation to the other cases where there was disputed fingerprint evidence and we will be examining these in future issues of Magill.