A Rock as a Weapon

Quick question. Could your fingerprint / DNA be found on a rock that you threw at someone ?

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Fingerprints, highly unlikely, but… there may be a chance if you have naturally oily hands and threw a smoothed, flattened out rock from the river and it’s properly handled as evidence from the start to safeguard your prints…

However, advances in forensic sciences/recovery/processing have been amazing, especially the recent advances in ‘trace DNA’… making it very possible to recover skin cells from a thrown rock… something which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

Getting away with something today, doesn’t mean you’re in the clear, lol… and since there’s no statute of limitations on murder, I suggest throwing your rock at a window, or a parked car or whatever… some form of crime that doesn’t justify the time and expense of high-tech DNA recovery efforts-

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Yes, both your fingerprints and / or your trace DNA can be found on a thrown rock. The quality of the fingerprint evidence, though, highly depends on the roughness of the stone’s surface and the trace DNA samples taken from it are known to have a high risk of false positives. The fingerprint brushes used by crime scene investigators can transfer trace amounts of skin cells from one surface to another, leading to inaccurate results.

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I have a simple solution to your problem. Buy a pair of gloves and put them on before you throw this rock. Don’t breathe on it either.

Well, it’s literally impossible for all the rocks to be confiscated; but then I’m sure our Liberals have a plan.

They’ll do a rock buyback. I’ll move to Arizona and become a billionaire!

Depends on the porousness of the rock.

Fingerprints on rocks . Any surface that is about as smooth as the miniature corrugated cardboard type ridges on your fingers can potentially bear identifiable latent fingerprints… and the flexibility of the finger skin can often also conform to relatively rough surfaces such as imitation leather dashboards.

Throwing a piece of quartz would likely allow fingerprints to be lifted easily with it’s smooth surface.