"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prisons — men and women convicted of crimes based on outdated dental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. The Dallas Morning News reports
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.........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. 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.”
http://www.statesman.com/news/news/state-regional/convictions-based-on-bite-marks-scrutinized-in-tex/npCkY/
See list of known Texas bite-mark cases (Set out in Innocence Project letter)
https://csidds.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/innocence-project-retroactive-case-identification-letter-1.pdf