I spoke with one of my constituents, a Mr. Benson, who is currently suing the manufacturer of the fingerprint reading machine in the jail. His fingerprints read that he was a convicted felon out of Oregon in error. There was also a case of a restaurant owner in Oregon, Miguel Espinosa, who read as Franklin Cruz - a felon. Espinosa ended up losing his restaurant.
Apparently, some guy named William Kellog has had his crimes attributed to more than 200 people - according to this Mr. Benson.
Fingerprints, like ballistics, is about 80% science, and 20% black art, despite all the gee-whizz stuff they show on TV. I was at a police equipment show, and received a demo of a thumbprint scanner that was supposed to prevent mixed-up identities in jails. The salesman made a an image of my thumbprint, which was laminated into an ID card. He put the card in a reader, and then placed his thumb on the scanner. The hardware said we were identical.
He was very embarrassed, so he made a print of his own thumb, and then compared it to mine. Our prints were identical enough for the quickie system to proclaim them one and the same. Of course, our other nine fingers didn't match, but our thumbs were close enough that it would take a real expert several minutes to tell them apart.
Ten good prints gets you to a folder with 2 or 200 sets of prints that match the "quick" classification. It then takes a real expert to go through the entire bunch to look for a match.
Of course, if the wrong prints are assigned to the wrong name, and the government is too lazy to do anything about it, all the technical expertice in the world won't help you.