Discredited bite-mark evidence: Steven Chaney; Cases based on discredited bite-mark evidence will be tough to find. "Chaney said he hopes his case will serve as a warning to other prosecutors. He said the evidence shouldn’t be used under any circumstances. “It’s not like fingerprints or DNA,” Chaney said. “What you are getting is somebody’s opinion, and it’s not fact.” Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at the New York-based Innocence Project, pointed to a study the forensic odontologists board conducted last year that concluded many of the dentists in the group couldn’t even identify which injuries were bite marks. “There is no basic or applied research that supports any claims that bite-mark experts routinely make,” Fabricant said. “It has no business in criminal court, period.”" Dallas Morning News. Dallas Morning News

STORY: "Cases based on discredited bite-mark evidence will be tough to find," by reporters Brandi Grissom and Jennifer Emily, published by the Dallas Morning News on October 25, 2015.

PHOTO CAPTION:  "Steven Chaney was released from prison nearly 30 years after bite-mark analysis was used to convict him in a Dallas County double homicide."

GIST;  "No one knows just how many more Steven Chaneys are sitting in Texas prisons — men and women convicted of crimes based on outdated dental analysis that scientists now say is nonsense. In some ways, Chaney was one of the lucky ones. He was released from prison two weeks ago after a Dallas County district judge agreed his murder conviction and life sentence in a 1987 double homicide were based on unreliable scientific conclusions about his teeth. He got a shot at freedom because defense lawyers and the Dallas County Conviction Integrity Unit identified his case and set about investigating the bite-mark evidence that had secured his conviction. Tracking down dozens — maybe hundreds — of other potentially innocent victims of junk science won’t be nearly as easy. There is no central repository of cases in which bite-mark testimony was key. There’s no database of dentists who testified about bite marks. And the cases are mostly decades old, and experts, defense lawyers and prosecutors have moved on or died. As Chaney settles into life on the outside after just a couple weeks of freedom — learning to use a cellphone and the TV remote — lawyers and criminal justice officials statewide are trying to figure out how to find others like Chaney. The Texas Forensic Science Commission, a tiny agency charged with overseeing the use of science in courtrooms, is working to ferret out those cases while ensuring that wrongful convictions based on faulty bite-mark interpretations don’t continue. But it’s a lofty task, and the commission, with four employees and a $500,000 annual budget, can’t do it without help. “We rely on the community’s willingness to step forward and take an introspective look at their work,” said Lynn Robitaille Garcia, the Forensic Science Commission’s executive director. Since the 1950s, prosecutors have invoked the testimony of dentists who compared molds of suspects’ teeth to bite marks left at a crime scene. In Chaney’s case, Dr. Jim Hales told the jury that there was a “one-to-a-million chance” that anybody but the Dallas construction worker had made a bite mark found on the body of one of the victims, John Sweek. (Chaney hasn’t been fully exonerated, and his case isn’t finally settled.) In recent years, though, the nation’s foremost forensic science bodies have concluded that no scientific data exists to support the notion that such an exact match can be made. In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences published a report that concluded there was insufficient scientific basis to conclusively match bite marks. The Associated Press reported in 2013 that at least 24 people had been exonerated in cases in which bite-mark evidence played a central role in the conviction. And even the American Board of Forensic Odontologists, the body that certifies dentists who analyze bite marks, has decided the evidence can’t be used to draw strong conclusions, such as in Chaney’s trial. “People had made statements about the validity of bite marks that were greatly exaggerated,” said Dr. Adam Freeman, a forensic odontologist and the incoming American Board of Forensic Odontologists president. Hales, in an affidavit filed with the court, acknowledged that the testimony he gave in Chaney’s case is inaccurate.

Chaney’s case is likely to be just the first of many reviewed. In a set of bizarre Waco cases, at least three men were convicted of murder in trials that hinged on testimony from the same dentists involved in Chaney’s case. Two of the men were exonerated by DNA after spending a total of nearly two decades in prison. The third man, David Spence, was sentenced to death and executed in 1997. His son, Jason Spence, wants prosecutors and the commission to re-open the case. “I want his name cleared,” said Spence, who lives in Alabama. “They took away my father over something he did not do.” To find more bite-mark cases, the Texas Forensic Science Commission will comb through legal documents available online. They’ll also ask prosecutors and defense lawyers to review old cases. Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk is the first prosecutor in the nation to agree to an inmate’s release from prison because of faulty dental testimony. Other counties have taken note of the Chaney case, and some are reviewing old cases and mulling whether to continue using bite-mark evidence in prosecutions. In Tarrant County, prosecutors are working with the medical examiner to determine how many involved bite marks. “We aren’t expecting it to be a large number,” said Samantha K. Jordan, a spokeswoman for District Attorney Sharen Wilson. In Harris County, prosecutors will no longer go forward with cases in which a bite mark is the lone evidence.........Chaney said he hopes his case will serve as a warning to other prosecutors. He said the evidence shouldn’t be used under any circumstances. “It’s not like fingerprints or DNA,” Chaney said. “What you are getting is somebody’s opinion, and it’s not fact.” Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at the New York-based Innocence Project, pointed to a study the forensic odontologists board conducted last year that concluded many of the dentists in the group couldn’t even identify which injuries were bite marks. “There is no basic or applied research that supports any claims that bite-mark experts routinely make,” Fabricant said. “It has no business in criminal court, period.”"

The entire story can be found at"

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/headlines/20151025-cases-based-on-discredited-bite-mark-evidence-will-be-tough-to-find.ece

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
 
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The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
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