Lana Canen v. Dennis Chapman

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge.

Lana Canen was convicted of felony murder on August 10, 2005 in Indiana state court. Over seven years later, the state postconviction court vacated her conviction after Detective Dennis Chapman, the state’s fingerprint expert, recanted his trial testimony. He conceded that he mistakenly had identified a latent fingerprint found at the crime scene as belonging to Ms. Canen. The misidentification occurred because Detective Chapman only was trained to compare “known prints” (ie., digital, ink, or powder fingerprint exemplars), not “latent prints” (ie., invisible, unknown…