AFTE Store - A Report on the AFTE Theory of Identification and Range of Conclusions for Tool Mark Identification and Resulting Approaches to Casework

This updated paper was presented on May 17, 2001 to the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes SPTM 2001, conference in Berlin, Germany. It describes: 1) American traditional approaches to toolmark identification; 2) the AFTE theory of identification; 3) the AFTE range of conclusions; 4) the author’s personal use of consecutive matching striae (CMS) in casework; and 5) comments on a paper by Dr. Steve Bunch critiquing CMS from a Bayesian point of view.