Ear prints in crime scene investigations

DEFINITION: Two-dimensional replicas of external ear parts made from impressions left on surfaces.

SIGNIFICANCE: When human ears touch surfaces, they can leave impressions; if such impressions are found at crime scenes, investigators may be able to use them as evidence in identifying suspects.

The ears of human beings assume something close to their final shape a few months after birth. The ears continue to increase in size through the early teens, but afterward, ear form remains fairly stable unless altered by disease, surgery, accident, or piercing.

The human auricle, the visible part of the outer human ear, has a convoluted design. In most adults, the two auricles differ from each other as well as from the auricles of other adults. The apparent uniqueness of auricle shape is the basis for the forensic endeavor sometimes called earology.

The idea of an ear identification system found support in the studies of an early twentieth-century doctor working in Prague, R. Imhofer, who examined photographs of five hundred ears. Imhofer discovered that he needed only four characteristics to distinguish one ear from the others. In 1964, American police official Alfred V. Iannarelli published a book on his research into ear shapes. Iannarelli claimed that external ears have unique shapes and that ear features can be classified with a system similar to that used to classify fingerprints.

Criminal investigators occasionally find ear impressions left at crime scenes. Perpetrators, for example, often listen at windows, with their ears pressed against the glass, before breaking into houses. Perspiration, oils, and wax on the perpetrators’ outer ears may leave prints that crime scene specialists can reveal with standard fingerprint visualization techniques.

Investigators may use latent ear prints in several ways. If an ear print found at a crime scene does not match the ear prints of a potential suspect, the crime scene print may be used to exclude that person as a suspect. If the latent ear print appears similar to one or the other of a potential suspect’s ear prints, the ear print may be used as evidence that the suspect could have visited the crime scene.

In the United States, judges typically have not allowed prosecutors to use ear prints for positive identification. An exception occurred in a Washington State murder trial when the judge allowed prosecution witnesses to testify that a defendant was the probable source of a latent ear print found at the murder scene. The defendant appealed, resulting in a leading 1999 case on ear-print evidence, State of Washington v. Kunze.

The Kunze appellate judges applied the Frye test (under which the scientific theory or method used to generate evidence must be determined to be generally accepted as reliable in the scientific community) to determine whether the novel scientific evidence of an ear print should be admitted into court. The judges concluded that latent ear prints offer class characteristics but not individual characteristics. That is, in the view of the Washington State court, ear impression evidence can support an opinion that a particular person cannot be excluded as the maker of a latent print, but it cannot support an opinion that a particular person probably made a latent print.

Courts in other jurisdictions have reached similar conclusions regarding the reliability of ear prints. In the United Kingdom, the conviction in R v. Dallagher (2002) was overturned after the Court of Appeal deemed ear print evidence unsafe, citing the discipline as an “infant science.” Recent advancements in forensic science have shifted focus toward Automated Ear Recognition (AER), a biometric technology that uses computer algorithms to analyze ear images rather than physical impressions. While traditional ear print analysis remains useful for excluding suspects, the scientific community continues to debate its reliability for positive identification.

Bibliography

Abbas, Ali, and Guy N. Rutty. “Forensic Web Watch.” Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine, vol. 10, no. 2, June. 2003, pp. 129–31.

Champod, Christophe, et al. “Earmarks as Evidence: A Critical Review.” Journal of Forensic Sciences, vol. 46, no. 6, Nov. 2001, pp. 1275–84.

Manikam, Vijiaprabu, et al. “Importance and Reliability of Ear Print Analysis as Evidence.” Journal of Posthumanism, vol. 5, no. 3, 2025, pp. 296–304.

Oyebiyi, Oladayo G., et al. “A Systematic Literature Review on Human Ear Biometrics: Approaches, Algorithms, and Trend in the Last Decade.” Information, vol. 14, no. 3, 2023, p. 192.

Rani, Deepika, et al. “Characteristic Features of Ear and Ear-Prints in Forensic Identification.” The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery, vol. 33, no. 4, June 2022, pp. 1093–98, doi:10.1097/SCS.0000000000008056. Accessed 4 Dec. 2025.