"Attorneys for a former Akron police captain serving 26 years to
life in prison after a jury convicted him in 1998 of killing his ex-wife
will argue at hearings in Akron that their client deserves a new trial
because there’s no physical evidence that ties him to the slaying. The
case of Douglas Prade, 69, has been bouncing around various courts
after experts testified in 2012 that male DNA found on Margo Prade’s lab
coat didn’t match her ex-husband’s. Summit County Common Pleas Judge
Sara Hunter, who has since retired, exonerated and freed Prade in
January 2013 and wrote in a ruling that Prade should get a new trial if
the exoneration was overturned.........Hearings in the case begin Wednesday afternoon. Croce
has said she would only allow testimony and arguments about DNA evidence
at this week’s hearings. But defense attorneys hope to convince Croce
to consider an expert’s report that said bite mark testimony from
prosecution experts during the 1998 trial would be inadmissible today. Cleveland
attorney David Alden said Prade was convicted in large part on
testimony from forensic dental experts, one of whom said the bite mark
on Margo Prade’s arm was made by her ex-husband and another who said it
was consistent with his dentition. Standards in forensic dentistry have
evolved since 1998 and in the last few years, Alden said. Today, those
experts wouldn’t have been allowed to testify that it was Prade who bit
his ex-wife unless they were certain who might have been in Margo
Prade’s van when she was shot and killed Nov. 26, 1997, Alden said. “A
lot of people have looked carefully at the forensic science of
odontology and have said it doesn’t have a scientific basis,” Alden
said."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/4/ohio-judge-to-decide-if-ex-officer-gets-new-trial-/