The first criminal case in the U.S. in which fingerprint evidence alone won conviction occurred this month in New York City in 1911. Burglary suspect Caesar Cella, alias Charles Crispi, was undone by prints identified by detective Joseph Faurot. Just a few months earlier, a murder conviction was obtained in Chicago with the aid of fingerprint evidence. The first known crime case solved by fingerprint matching occurred in 1880 in Tokyo, but the unique pattern of each person’s fingerprints had been known since ancient Rome. Today, the use of DNA samples from crime scenes is the fastest-growing area of forensic evidence. At the end of 2012, there were 1,571,013 inmates in U.S. federal and state prisons, a decline of almost 28,000 from a year earlier. Profile America is in its17th year as a public service of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Sunday, May 18th. The New York Stock Exchange, by signaling business prospects through share prices, has long been a bellwether of the nation’s economic health. The exchange started this week in 1792, as some two dozen merchants and brokers established an organized approach to their buying and selling. In good weather, they operated under a Buttonwood tree on Wall Street. Otherwise, they moved to the shelter of a nearby coffeehouse to continue their trading. This makeshift setup eventually evolved into an economic powerhouse, watched closely each trading day to see how the bulls or bears are assessing the overall U.S. economy. Thirty years ago, less than 10 percent of U.S. household wealth was held in stocks and bonds. Today, that percentage is 46 percent. You can find current data on the country’s economy by downloading the America’s Economy mobile application at <www.census.gov/mobile>.
Saturday, May 17th. On this date in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued one of its most historic decisions, changing the social landscape of the nation. The justices ruled unanimously in Brown vs. Board of Education that segregation of public schools based solely on race was unconstitutional. The ruling effectively did away with the “separate but equal” concept that had legitimized segregation for several decades. The case was argued on behalf of the NAACP by Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African American Supreme Court Justice. In the early 1950s, about 14 percent of adult blacks were high school graduates. That figure is now over 83 percent. Then, barely over 2 percent had college diplomas; now the rate has risen to almost 19 percent. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>.