"WEST SAID HE BELIEVES THE SUSPECT, DUNCAN, MADE THE BITE MARKS AND KILLED HALEY. "SHE WAS RAPED AND SODOMIZED AND HELD UNDER WATER BY THIS SON OF A B----," HE SAID. "NOW I'M THE BAD GUY BECAUSE THIS GUY RAPED A 2-YEAR-OLD.""
REPORTER JERRY MITCHELL: CLARION LEDGER;
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Dr. West strenuously denied Radley Balko's allegations in an interview with Clarion Ledger reporter Jerry Mitchell which was published on February 28, 2009, under the heading, "Forensic dentist defends work he's done in autopsies."
"Embattled forensic dentist Dr. Michael West on Friday defended the bite-mark identifications he's made in court that have helped put some defendants on death row in Mississippi and Louisiana, the story began.
""I've exonerated three or four times as many people as I've convicted," he said. "I'm a little old dentist from Hattiesburg, and I've got the top lawyers in the country coming after me. The New York Times wrote an editorial on me. Why? They can't stand the evidence," he continued.
"West, who has long drawn criticism for his bite-mark testimony, is drawing fire again for his handling of the examination of a 23-month-old Louisiana girl prior to her autopsy.
A 24-minute video entered as a court exhibit shows an examination leading up to the Dec. 18, 1993, autopsy of Haley Oliveaux of Monroe, La., who drowned.
The video begins with West examining her body. He notes several injuries but none on the right cheek. No marks can be seen there.
When the video resumes the next day, a visible abrasion can be seen on her right cheek. West can then be seen pressing a plaster mold of the suspect's teeth into her cheek.
In a sworn statement, defense bite-mark expert Dr. Charles Michael Bowers of Ventura, Calif., said what West did constituted "forensic fraud."
West responded that the accusations he made up or falsified evidence "is a damn lie."
"You can't make an inflammatory response on a dead person," he said.
He defended pressing the mold against Haley's cheek, saying he was following protocol Bowers laid out in his manual that says bite-mark comparisons can be made from "working study model to impression of wound."
West said he doesn't understand why he's drawing criticism when another bite-mark expert testified for the prosecution at the capital murder trial of Jimmie Duncan, now on death row.
Bite-mark expert Dr. Richard Souviron of Coral Gables, Fla., who testified for the defense at trial, said none of the marks on Haley's body was a bite mark. He said the mark on her right cheek is an abrasion likely created by the tape pulled from her cheek and West's actions.
The pathologist who conducted the autopsy, Dr. Steven Hayne of Brandon, said the cheek injury was visible long before Haley's body was brought to Mississippi. The injury simply became more pronounced overnight, he said.
It's obvious the marks were visible before, he said, because emergency room doctors testified they saw red marks on her cheeks. Photographs of Haley at the emergency room show some red marks on her cheeks, but medical tape covers up much of the area where the cheek abrasion is later visible in the video.
After viewing the video and emergency room photographs, noted pathologist Michael Baden of New York City said he believes the abrasion shown in the video could have come from that tape.
West said he believes the suspect, Duncan, made the bite marks and killed Haley. "She was raped and sodomized and held under water by this son of a b----," he said. "Now I'm the bad guy because this guy raped a 2-year-old."
West said Souviron was among those who criticized him for using ultraviolet light to make bite-mark examinations - only to later host a bite-mark seminar on using ultraviolet light.
Souviron responded, "Nobody had any criticism of the use of ultraviolet light. What they criticized was him saying he could see things nobody else could see and not being able to replicate his results."
West said his technique using ultraviolet light was no secret and that he lectured about it from Scotland Yard to China. "They come up and say it's junk science and banish me and then they come out with this technique like it's their own."
Two Noxubee County men, Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, were cleared after each spent more than 15 years behind bars for rape-murders they did not commit.
In each case, West testified he found those men's bite marks on the victims.
More than a year ago, DNA identified the real culprit, who told authorities he strangled, sexually assaulted and killed two, 3-year-old girls. He said he never bit them.
West - who said he hasn't practiced forensic dentistry in three years - stands by his testimony he gave in those trials, saying the two men must have bitten the girls before they were killed.
He said he's being attacked because he's testified for the prosecution in a death penalty case. "I'm tired of being beaten up because of the death penalty," he said. "I don't make the law."
If the convictions didn't involve death sentences, "you couldn't raise $20 for their defense," he said. "I'm personally opposed to the death penalty."
Duncan told authorities he accidentally left Haley in the bathtub and that she drowned.
Louisiana had planned to charge Duncan with negligent homicide but after receiving the autopsy report, it elevated its charges.
The report included a description of anal injuries that Hayne testified could have been caused by sodomy.
Authorities found no blood or semen at the crime scene, on Haley's body, or on her clothing, wrote the Louisiana Supreme Court. "The only direct link the prosecution was able to make between the victim's injuries and the defendant was premised on the bite-mark evidence.""
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
