Despite standards and requirements that prevent false fingerprint matches and the widespread acceptance of fingerprinting as definitive and foolproof, at least a thousand incorrect matches are annually made in the United States. The public clings blindly to the idea of the infallibility of using fingerprinting as a means of identification in spite of cases like Brandon Mayfield. He was arrested for the 2004 Madrid train bombings whose guilt was insisted on the basis of fingerprint evidence by the FBI but disproved by the Spanish police. Although the fact that fingerprinting is not error-proof may be hard to accept, I feel that this problem needs to be examined objectively and thoroughly. If it continues to be quietly ignored or “swept under the rug”, innocent people could be convicted and be sent to jail for crimes they did not commit. Furthermore, this fact should be included wherever fingerprinting is discussed, as I was quite surprised to learn that so many false matches occur every year.