STORY: "Bite-mark expert dismisses own testimony," by reporter Jerry Mitchell, published by the Clarion-Ledger on June 20, 2015.
GIST: "The expert whose bite-mark evidence led a jury to put Eddie Lee Howard Jr. on Mississippi’s death row now believes such evidence should be tossed. “I no longer believe in bite-mark analysis,” forensic odontologist Michael West of Hattiesburg testified in a 2012 deposition. “I don’t think it should be used in court. I think you should use DNA. Throw bite marks out.” On Tuesday, lawyers from the Mississippi Innocence Project will argue to the state Supreme Court that Howard deserves a new trial. The state says justices have already rejected these arguments in a previous appeal. Howard, who turns 62 on Saturday, remains on death row, convicted of the 1992 rape and stabbing death of 84-year-old Georgie Kemp of Columbus. Recently performed DNA tests reveal the presence of male DNA (other than Howard) on the bloody knife found at the murder scene. DNA tests on the nightgown and the rape kit have excluded Howard as well. There was no DNA evidence presented at his trial. Instead, West became the major witness to link Howard to the crime, testifying a bite mark he found on her body — after it had been exhumed —uniquely matched Howard’s teeth. West told jurors he could tell from another mark that Kemp was “fighting for her life” when this bite was inflicted. It was unclear how he supposedly knew this. For many years, much of West’s work went unchallenged, and he bragged of his accuracy, once declaring his error rate was “something less than my Savior, Jesus Christ.” But in the years since, his work has been discredited. His bite-mark identifications implicating Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer led to their wrongful convictions. Together, the two Mississippi men spent a total of more than three decades behind bars until DNA proved them innocent and identified the real culprit, Justin Albert Johnson, now imprisoned for raping and killing the two 3-year-old girls. Even after their exonerations in 2008, West insisted to The Clarion-Ledger that his bite-mark identifications of Brooks and Brewer were correct. For decades, courts recognized him as an expert in bite marks, wound patterns, gunshot residue, crime scene reconstructions, blood spatters, ultraviolet photography and child abuse. In trial after trial, he told jurors dental impressions were as unique as fingerprints, giving jurors the idea crimes could be solved strictly by identifying bite marks on bodies. In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report, concluding there was no basis in science for forensic odontologists to conclude someone is “the biter,” excluding all other suspects.
Four years later, the American Board of Forensic Odontology changed its guidelines to bar such testimony..........In his closing statement, District Attorney Forrest Allgood praised West as a visionary. “The progress of mankind has been carried forward on the backs of people like Michael West,” he said. “The church threatened to burn Copernicus (actually Galileo) because he dared to say that the planets didn’t revolve around the earth. So it was with Michael West.” The jury convicted Howard, and once again, he was sentenced to death. This time on appeal, the state Supreme Court upheld the conviction, rejecting the claim that defense counsel had been incompetent in failing to call a single witness, including a witness to rebut West’s identification. Three forensic odontologists, hired by the defense on appeal, concluded three bite marks West pointed out in this case aren’t visible in autopsy photographs, “nor were the alleged bite marks visible by the naked eye or noted in the autopsy report.” Instead, West testified he saw the marks by using an ultraviolent light — a technique they questioned.........If ever called to the witness stand again, West testified he would have to say that bite-mark identifications aren’t reliable enough to be used in court. “I can no longer rely on bite marks as a truth."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2015/06/20/bite-mark-expert-dismisses-testimony/29045605/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
