the pistol used to kill cliff merck had been sold to a drug dealer by robert and gerald cowan, but forson, the cowans' fingerprints did not match those found at the crime scene. >> the person who attempted the comparison was then able to make a match, and he failed to have another examiner verify his conclusions. >> this was a breach of protocol. the standard operating procedure in all crime labs requires a fingerprint examiner to have someone verify his or her conclusions. so the fingerprints were resubmitted for analysis, and this time, the results were verified by a supervisor. the fingerprints found in the mecks' home matched robert cowan. >> it goes without saying that i was highly irritated and embarrassed for the department. >> i initially on the latent evidence being misread, i tend to believe that was probably a training issue. >> it just was simply a situation where the original examiner was in over his head and couldn't handle it. >> armed with the fingerprint evidence and the ballistic test results, robert cowan was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murde