A Comparison of Six Fingerprint Enhancement Techniques for the Recovery of Latent Fingerprints from Unfired Cartridge Cases

Abstract: This work compared the effectiveness of six different enhancement methods on six different sizes of brass cartridges. One sebaceous f ingerprint was deposited onto 25 of each size of cartridge to enable a statistical evaluation of the enhancement methods for each cartridge size to be undertaken. The enhancement methods compared were cyanoacrylate fuming (CA) followed by brilliant yellow dye staining (BY40), CA followed by gun blue (GB) followed by BY40, GB only, CA followed by palladium deposition, palladium deposition only, and powder suspension. The six sizes of cartridges used in this study were.22 cal,.32 cal, 9 mm,.38 cal, 12 gauge ribbed shotgun, and 12 gauge smooth shotgun. Two techniques provided the best results: (1) CA followed by GB followed by BY40 and (2) CA followed by palladium deposition. These two enhancement techniques were also compared statistically and no statistical difference in their effectiveness was found, suggesting that both techniques are equally as effective at enhancing f ingerprints on brass cartridge cases