WILLIAMS AND WILL WEST CONUNDRUM WHO WERE TWO UNRELATED BUT IDENTICAL INMATE SPARKED THE NEED FOR ONE OF THE MOST USED MEANS OF IDENTIFICATION TODAY CALLED FINGERPRINTING.

Just imagine you went for an award ceremony and mid-way into the ceremony, you name was surprisingly mentioned for an award only for you to walk up to the stage and then you realise that there is another person on stage bearing same name with you, with same facial identification, wanting to collect same award your name was mentioned for.

While such scene will be without a doubt entertaining in reality but of course it will surely not be entertaining if your name was mentioned and you resemble a person who suppose is a criminal needed for homicide, to mention the worst, you get captured for being the closest match. Today a simple fingerprint check will do the trick. Notwithstanding, once upon a time and up until the start of the twentieth century, fingerprinting hadn't been designed, so if something like this happened to a man, that individual would be in a significant pickle, without a doubt.

Actually, such a circumstance happened to a man by the name of Will West arrested and convicted for a minor crime, who in 1903, upon landing in the Leavenworth Penitentiary in northeast Kansas was informed that he was already in jail serving a lifelong sentence for first-degree murder. All things considered, he was still checked by the Bertillon identification framework in the jail and his face coordinated matched with that of another William West who was in their criminal database and behind bars in that same jail. Same name and for some odd reason relatively indistinguishable facial features, however to much shock to jail authorities, two totally different people. They were the reason fingerprints are now used as one of the major means of identification.

Two years earlier, in 1901, an indicted criminal named William West was gotten at the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, and in what considered a formal system, M.W. McClaughry, the records assistant, took his Bertillon estimations, accumulated an archive file for the detainee and educated him about the guidelines in the jail and in addition the number of his cell.

The Bertillon framework for criminal identification was a strategy created by the French handwriting expert committed criminologist and biometrics specialist Alphonse Bertillon. In 1887 it was actualized all through the United States prisons so they could keep point by point report cards for the inmates. It was just a basic criminal mug shot, just with a detailed description of the individual's face joined to it.

It worked fine and dandy like this, as hoodlums were identified by their photo and their full name or for a brief span in any event. It took close to two decades for a man to develop that bore a striking similarity to another, regardless of the unrealisticness of such an event and uncannily in a similar jail and having a similar name to boot.

That clerk beforehand specified got another sentenced criminal at his office, sent to Leavenworth to serve his time. He had his photo taken and was measured utilizing the Bertillon system and as it happened, upon the institutionalized checkup, a document with the name William West flew up from the jail's archives. The clerk asked the man, "What now? What have you done this time?" Confused Will addressed that it was his first time in here and in addition, it was his first ever conviction.

At first, the clerk was not stunned nor startled, understanding that relatively every criminal reluctantly rejects his wrongdoings and mumbled basically "mm well" to the man, while looking through his document the entire while, when all of a sudden shockingly, it turned out the record before him had a place with a man as yet serving his sentence in the jail. Gazing at the face in the document, this man had precisely the same structure, rise to nose length, mouth shape, and situating of the eyes as the individual sitting in the seat, opposite his desk in front of him.

William West and will west

He ran a double check and beyond any doubt enough, everything was totally indistinguishable, as though a clone of the prisoner sat before him.

First ever hand and fingerprints taken by William James Herschel

In this way, to stay away from similar disarray later on in the future and in the wake of hearing that Bertillon had made another achievement in the progression of dactyloscopy by distinguishing and sentencing a killer in light of his fingerprints, the prison embraced this unique finger impression identification framework rather than the more established one, seeing it as a more dependable technique for Identification.

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As it turned out, it was exceptionally dependable, as the two prisoners subsequent to being analyzed in 1905 shown completely different patterns.

William West and Will West same picture identification but different fingerprint

• 1905 – U.S. Military embraces the utilization of fingerprints before long, police offices started to embrace the utilization of fingerprints.

• 1908 – The principal official unique mark card was created

• 1911 - Fingerprints are first acknowledged by U.S. courts as a dependable methods for Identification.

• Dec. 21, 1911, The Illinois State Supreme Court maintained the tolerability of unique mark confirm presuming that fingerprints are a solid type of Identification.

• 1924 – Formation of Identification Division of FBI

• 1980 – First PC information base of fingerprints was produced, which came to be known as the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, (AFIS). As of today, there are about an estimate of 80 million cards or almost 800 million individual fingerprints entered in AFIS.

The story has been retold endless times and is presently viewed as an exemplary in the field. It was found that the second Will arrested for a minor wrongdoing was actually the genuine killer and not the one effectively detained and it was the fingerprint system that helped solve this puzzle.

Today, because of these two disconnected yet indistinguishable inmates and their jail problem, the fingerprint analysis is utilized by every law enforcement organization in each nation and the world at large, so when required, they can seek after suspects and subsequently convict them effectively. It is equally one of the most used means of identification today.

Modern fingerprint scanner

• Image one and two are from http://www.shutterstock.com

• Image seven is from http://pixabay.com

REFERENCES

• http://www.crimescene-forensics.com/Crime_Scene_Forensics/History_of_Fingerprints.html

• https://blackamericaweb.com/2016/06/17/little-known-black-history-fact-will-and-william-west/

• https://blackthen.com/strange-case-of-how-two-non-related-men-with-the-same-name-and-identical-looks-sparked-the-need-for-fingerprinting/

• https://82141360.weebly.com/will-west-case.html