Lip Prints
The study of lip prints is called cheiloscopy. A person's lip prints are unique. The use of lip prints in criminal cases is limited because the credibility of lip prints has not been firmly established in our courts. Below is an interesting article about how lip prints were used to identify a Peeping Tom.
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posted Sunday, February 15, 1998 6:27 a.m. CT
Lip print lands Peeping Tom in jail
The Associated Press
NEWPORT
NEWS, Va. (AP) - This peeper's pucker landed him in jail.
Robert Neal Smith, 41, was sentenced to five months in jail Friday after pleading guilty to peeping into his neighbor's windows. He was charged with five counts of being a Peeping Tom after his lip prints matched ones left on a window in August.
Police had lifted the impression in September and obtained a search warrant for Smith's lip marks. The state crime lab claimed the two were a match.
Smith told the General District Court judge he was drinking heavily when he peeped into his neighbors' homes. At one point he was chased by a woman's husband and another woman caught him tampering with her window screen.
The five basic types of lip prints used by forensic scientists are:
