Fingerprint issue could affect 104 cases

More than 100 defendants in Central Florida could have their cases reviewed to see if they were wrongly convicted based on fingerprint evidence presented by a former Orange County Sheriff’s Office employee who was accused of making mistakes.

The Orange-Osceola Public Defender’s Office has identified 104 cases so far that may have been affected by the work of Marco Palacio, who worked as a fingerprint examiner until October. He was transferred to a new position after a supervisor rated his job knowledge and work quality as “below standards” in an annual review, according to his personnel file, and later resigned.

Orange-Osceola Public Defender Robert Wesley said his office identified more than 1,952 criminal cases in which Palacio was involved.

Wesley’s office had three

summer interns reviewing the cases to find clients who may have been harmed by errors. Those interns got through 846 of the cases and found 104 cases — or 12 percent — had substantial charges “where fingerprint evidence was a major part of the state’s case, a small number of fingerprints were found, little to no other evidence was available” and a system called Automated Fingerprint Identification System that Palacio used was likely involved, Wesley said.

He said if the AFIS system is used improperly, it could result in errors.

The summer interns have since left, and for now there is no additional funding to look into the remaining cases, he said.

“It took three people three months to get half of them done,” Wesley said. “… This is somebody’s mess that we’re supposed to analyze.”

A Sheriff ’s Office internal investigation into Palacio began in October and ended in May after he resigned as part of an agreement, agency spokesman Capt. Angelo Nieves said.

The Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office learned of the sheriff’’s office internal investigation into Palacio’s work in late January when a prosecutor tried to call Palacio as an expert witness but was told he had been removed from the latent prints unit.

The State Attorney’s Office then sent a letter to defense attorneys in February warning them that their clients’ cases may have been affected by Orange County Sheriff’s Office employee Marco Palacio’s alleged mistakes, described as “performance issues … clerical errors, failure to identify prints of value and the mislabeling of print cards.”

Wesley said his office would need additional resources to go through the remaining cases and had yet to decide on what steps to take next. He indicated the office would need to send employees to the Sheriff’s Office to digitize latent-print lift cards so he could have their own fingerprint examiners review Palacio’s work to see if he had made errors.

Palacio’s personnel file revealed that errors had been made for years before prosecutors were made aware — potentially affecting more than 2,500 cases.

The agency suspended the investigation when Palacio filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint, Nieves said.

After the complaint was filed, Palacio and the Sheriff ’s Office went into mediation and “reached an amicable resolution” — which included Palacio’s resignation, Nieves said.

“His resignation rendered the allegation of unsatisfactory performance moot and eliminated the need for further investigation,” Nieves said.

The Sheriff’s Office officially closed the investigation on May 30, Nieves said.

Further details of the mediation and resolution were not immediately available Tuesday.

Palacio had been employed with the Sheriff ’s Office in 1998, when he was first hired as a fingerprint technician. Before 2012, he earned the highest ratings possible each year on his annual reviews.

He was formally disciplined for some clerical errors in 2013 and was placed on a performance improvement plan in 2015 after receiving substandard ratings.

Attempts to reach Palacio for comment were unsuccessful.