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Other articles published on this Web site talk about ear identification and ear print identification, and its current non-status as an identification "science." It deserves noting that advocates of the validity of ear print identification frequently cite Alphonse Bertillon, a French identification bureau chief in the late 1800's and creator of anthropometry, as authority for the accuracy and usefulness of ear and ear print identification. Such attribution is inappropriate and without scientific merit.

Anthropometry is a system a body measurements of adult individuals for personal identification. As is illustrated in the accompanying drawing, anthropometry relies on the taking of the measurements of bony parts of the body, including measurements of the human ear. [See, in this regard, the description of his method in the book by: Alphonse Bertillon, SIGNALETIC INSTRUCTIONS INCLUDING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ANTHROPOMETRICAL IDENTIFICATION, [R.W. McClaughry translation], The Werner Company, 1896. The "Author's Preface" reveals that Bertillon "invented" his new method, which he called "Portrait parlé" (spoken portrait), in 1879, and rushed into print with a first (shortened) edition of his book in 1885 which he admitted was prepared in great haste, but which led to the significantly expanded and improved edition of which the cited volume is a translation.] Anthropometry was first introduced in the United States by Major McClaughry, the translator of Bertillon's book, in 1887 when he was the warden of the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet.

The Bertillon system of anthropometric measurements, which incidentally was abandoned world-wide because it failed to provide reliable and unique measurements and was too cumbersome to administer in a uniform manner, never relied on a single measurement of any part of the body for identifying a specific individual.

Bertillon's anthropometrical system of personal identification was divided into three integrated parts: (1) the bodily measurements that required measurements, conducted with the utmost precision and under carefully prescribed conditions, a series of the most characteristic dimensions of bony parts of the human anatomy; (2) the morphological description of the appearance and shape of the body and its measured parts as they related to movements "and even the most characteristic mental and moral qualities"; and (3) a description of peculiar marks observed on the "surface of the body, resulting from disease, accident, deformity or artificial disfigurement, such as moles, warts, scars, tattooings, etc."

It can be readily observed that Bertillon contemplated a complex process involving a threefold description of a human being, achieved by followed a cumbersome measuring procedure, before the identity of a person could be established through anthropometry. The system created by the Parisian law enforcement officer was in fact so cumbersome that two different individuals measuring the same person frequently would not arrive at the same description or measurements. It is in part the difficulty of administering the system in a uniform way that led to its abandonment when fingerprint identification came upon the scene.

At no time did Bertillon advocate that any one part of the human anatomy, including the ear, was sufficiently unique so that individuals could be distinguished by measuring and comparing that part of the body. He came close to suggesting ear uniqueness when he asserted "It is, in fact, almost impossible to meet with two ears which are identical in all their parts. . ." Bertillon was still referring, of course, to a physical observation and measurement of a complete ear and all of its many features. He certainly never suggested that identity could be established by comparing two partial and perhaps pressure-distorted latent ear impressions – such a process would have been anathema to the man who relied on an almost impossible-to-achieve perfection in measurements and description of the many characteristics of a complete ear. In fact, his only venture in statistics was to calculate that, if 14 different measurements of body parts were taken, the odds of finding two people with identical measurements were 286,435,456 to one. See, Stuart Kind & Michael Overman, SCIENCE AGAINST CRIME, 1972, at 17.

In order to arrive at a description of the ear that would satisfy Bertillon, the following aspects of the ear had to be described and measured:( a) three portions of the border of the ear (helix) and its degree of openess; ( b) the contour, degree of adherence to the cheek and dimension of the ear lobe; ( c) the inclination from horizontal, the profile, and the degree of reversion forwards of the antitragus; ( d) the measurement and windings of both the ascending and the median "anthelix" called the "fold." In addition to these measurements, Bertillon further required a description of the general form of the ear, its separation from the body of the head, and any peculiarities that are noted with the border, the lobe, the tragus, the antitragus, the concha, the superior fold, and the various depressions and Darwinian characteristics, and other elements. In the McClaughry translation of Bertillon's book, 15 pages deal with the detailed measurements and descriptions of all of the parts of the human ear that are required for use of the observed data in the overall anthropometric description of the individual.

It deserves repeating that Bertillon never dealt with crime scene latent ear impressions, developed in the manner latent fingerprints are made visible, and their measurement, photography, preservation, or uniqueness. In fact, Bertillon's anthropometry did not deal with crime scene traces at all. It was strictly a system whereby, supposedly, the identity of a person recently arrested could be compared to records made at the time of an earlier arrest to establish the existence of a prior record and avoid the use of false identities and concealment of one's true identity.

Thus, to cite Bertillon as authority for ear and/or ear print uniqueness is a deliberate misuse of his pioneering work in personal identification, and attributes to Alphonse Bertillon a premise which he never espoused or sought to advocate.

While Bertillon is revered in some quarters as the pioneer of human identification "sciences" by his development of anthropometry, he did not engage in the kind of "scientific research" that would have satisfied the strict Daubert-factor devotees when he announced his system of identification by bodily measurements. He began with an instinctive notion that when a series of measurements of various human body parts were undertaken, there would be so much diversity noticed that the chance of two people having the same measurements in every part of their body was so remote as to be negligible. No statistics were deemed necessary to put this system into use. Indeed, it was the discovery of two persons with similar names and identical measurements in the same U.S. penal facility – the so-called Will West and William West cases – whose fingerprints were nevertheless different, that resulted in the abandonment of anthropometry in favor of fingerprinting.

Without detracting from Alphonse Bertillon's considerable merit in developing the system of anthropometrical measurements, he was not above branching out into other fields of expertise for which he lacked training and experience. Never before having qualified as a document examiner, Bertillon testified as one of the police's handwriting experts in the trial and conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for high treason in 1894, erroneously ascribing an incriminating document as having been authored by Dreyfus. The defendant's innocence was later conclusively established, in no small part due to French writer Emile Zola's impassioned letter J'accuse, in which he charged the government witnesses with deliberately framing an innocent person; the letter resulted in Zola himself being convicted. The true culprit was eventually found and Dreyfus was given a pardon and, in 1906, awarded the Legion of Honor (Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur). See, J. Crépieux-Jamin, L'Expertise en Ecriture et les Leçons de l'Affaire Dreyfus, Paris, 1907. See also, Nicholas Halasz, CAPTAIN DREYFUS, New York, 1955.-----------