Criminals can be identified by the veins in their hands
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A world-renowned bone expert from Inverness has described how criminals can be caught using new techniques that identify the veins on the back of their hands.
Sue Black, forensic anthropologist and director of the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at Dundee University, said it has long been known that vein patterns on the back of the hand or wrist were as unique as a fingerprint.
But she said the concept was “really new” to the forensic world.
She said: “Imagine you go into a bank and you try to pass a fraudulent cheque and imagine that as you pass that bit of paper over the counter to the teller there’s actually a camera up above and it records the transaction so I will, for a very brief second, see the vein.”
Possible to convict
Black said depending on the picture quality, it could be possible to compare that photograph with a suspect’s vein pattern, making it possible to convict that individual of fraud if their hand had been captured on a security camera or a CCTV recording.
In a video on the online social networking YouTube channel, Black said veins were easy to detect and recognise because they were blue and they stood out.
She said the pattern on the back of your hand was exactly the same as the pattern that you were born with.
Pattern developed in the womb
“That pattern started to develop when you were inside mum and it doesn’t change, you don’t grow new veins, you don’t lose them, once you’ve got them they are there forever,” she said.
Black said the process of using veins as a form of identification shared the same basic principles as DNA testing.
“That pattern is going to be different to everybody that’s in your class or even to everybody who’s in your family. And because they are different between people that’s exactly the same principle that Alec Jeffries had with DNA. That principle says if this thing is different between different people, can we use it to prove that you are who you say you are and that who you say you are is who you’ve always been?”
Must be accurate
The technique does, however, rely on “thorough research protocol”.
“It may well be that I will look at the picture and I will have to say it’s not a very strong likelihood that this is the same individual but I can’t exclude them.
Or it might be of very good quality and I might be able to say that little variation, that little connection, that little pattern that you get just right there in the back of the hand — that’s really rare — we only see that in about one in 10,000 people.”
That kind of information becomes extremely important because it gives a jury the ability to assess whether an individual is likely to be the perpetrator of the crime.
In this country, that kind of identification can lead to imprisonment. But in other countries it may lead to a death sentence.
“That’s why the science has to be beyond reproach,” said Black.
“That’s why we have to be so incredibly careful about our research, our analysis, our evaluation and our reporting. When somebody’s life literally depends on your scientific evidence in the court room, science doesn’t get much more powerful and important than that.”
Crucial expertise
Black’s expertise has been crucial to a number of high-profile criminal cases, including the conviction of Scotland’s largest paedophile ring. in 2009.
In 1999 she headed the British Forensic Team’s exhumation of mass graves in Kosovo.
The expert, who attended Inverness Royal Academy in the 1970s, assisted during the dig for Renee MacRae’s remains at Dalmagarry quarry. As a child, she remembers the intensive hunt.
