POST: "A bite mark matching advocacy group just conducted a study that discredited bite mar matching evidence," by Radley Balko, published by The Washington Post, on April 8, 2015. (Radley Balko blogs about criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties for The Washington Post. He is the author of the book "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces.")
GIST: "The bite mark community reacted with shock, disappointment, and ultimately an effort to suppress the results of the study. According to reliable sources within the ABFO, American Board of Forensic Odontology) David Senn initially wanted to cancel the panel at the AAFS (American Academy of Forensic Sciences) conference in which Freeman and Pretty were to present the results. These sources say Senn was astonished at the results, and told other members of the ABFO that he was “reeling” from them. He also apologized to the organization for his role in the study. In the end, the organization did proceed with the presentation of the results, but then played down their significance.........While it’s commendable that the ABFO is attempting to create guidelines that will “ensure reliable results,” it’s far more troubling that the current guidelines don’t, that the unreliable results those guidelines produce have for years been used and continue to be used in court, and that rather than running to courtrooms across the country to halt the convictions, imprisonments and pending executions based on the results, the organization continues to fight for its members’ ability to testify using the very analysis it now concedes is flawed.........“If this were truly a science-based organization, I would not only expect them to be extremely troubled by the results of this study, I would expect them to want to publish the results,” says Paul Giannelli (a law professor at Cast Western Reserve University who specializes in scientific evidence). “And sooner rather than later, so that they could be considered in any pending criminal cases in which bite mark evidence is a factor.” The ABFO did release the raw data from the study in spreadsheet form to a few people, but won’t release the presentation given at the AAFS meeting, nor will they publish the data in a journal or another publicly assessable format, at least until the completion of the second study.........One of the pending criminal cases is the one mentioned at the start of this post: that of Clarence Dean, which is expected to go to trial sometime this year. As noted above, that case included an important evidentiary hearing in which a New York judge ruled that bite mark evidence is admissible and scientifically valid. Many other judges have made that ruling in the past, but this was the first such ruling since the publication of the NAS report in 2009. The prosecutor in Dean’s case is Melissa Mourges, a fierce advocate for bite mark matching who, as I explained in the series in February, has not only advocated for bite mark analysis as a field, but has waged nasty, often highly personal attacks on those who have raised concerns about its legitimacy. Mourges included a reproduction of the ABFO’s “decision tree” in her brief for the bite mark hearing in the Dean case. She cited the tree as another example of the bite mark community’s dedication to accuracy:.........But meanwhile, at least two of Vance’s top lieutenants continue to defend a field of forensics that has contributed to at least 24 wrongful convictions and arrests around the country, despite numerous studies showing it lacks any basis in science, including one organized by the field’s leading advocacy organization. Finally, I noted in my original series that last fall, the National Institute for Science and Technology announced the members of the forensic odontology subcommittee that will study the scientific validity of bite mark matching. The committee is one of several that will study various fields of forensics as part of the federal government’s push toward reform in light of the 2009 NAS report. Incredibly, 10 of the 16 members are either practicing bite mark analysts, or are open advocates of the practice, including the chairman, Robert Barsley. It’s a development one critic of bite mark matching likened to starting a committee to investigate the scientific validity of astrology, then stacking it with astrologists."
The entire post can be found at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/04/08/a-bite-mark-matching-advocacy-group-just-conducted-a-study-that-discredits-bite-mark-evidence/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
