Douglas Prade: Ohio. Dr. Michael Bowers (Forensics in focus: CSI DDS): Superb, gritty analysis of prosecution tactics relating to the physical evidence (a bitemark): "Forensics: DA's mess up their own DNA evidence and judge lets them use it against the defence."..."The DA will argue before Judge Croce that this DNA profile “could have been transferred by someone anytime” either before the crime or since the coat has been in police and it’s crime lab’s custody. That means he eliminates this as relevant evidence of the someone other than Prade being the killer because of no proper “chain of custody.” That’s the mantra DAs use when newly found DNA evidence does not support their theory of a defendant’s guilt. It just “showed up.” The DA (and an agreeing appellate judge) brush off the fact that their narrow minded analysis is due to the government’s own lack of due diligence in properly maintaining custody of the coat in the first place. The DA in this case would have been all over accepting this DNA from post conviction testing if it had been Prade’s." (Must Read. HL);

"Douglas Prade has spent over 29 years in prison, then was released by another judge for 16 months and then re-imprisoned since July 2014 by another judge. The physical evidence (a bitemark)  of his identification presented at the original trial that put him in prison now is considered unreliable by other dental experts in recent submitted court documents. Now Prade wants a new hearing about the defense obtained DNA evidence and will try to convince the judge that no viable evidence exists (based on  the bitemark opinion being junk) of Prade’s guilt. The DNA recovered was from the victim’s lab coat and profiled as being from an unknown male. The area the DNA was discovered was directly over the area of the skin mark. The DA will argue before Judge Croce that this DNA profile “could have been transferred by someone anytime” either before the crime or since the coat has been in police and it’s crime lab’s custody. That means he eliminates this as relevant evidence of the someone other than Prade being the killer because of no proper “chain of custody.” That’s the mantra DAs use when newly found DNA evidence does not support their theory of a defendant’s guilt. It just “showed up.” The DA (and an agreeing appellate judge) brush off the fact that their narrow minded analysis is due to the government’s own lack of due diligence in properly maintaining custody of the coat in the first place. The DA in this case would have been all over accepting this DNA from post conviction testing if it had been Prade’s. You can be sure the DA will argue that the bitemark opinions are still worthwhile as well, claiming it to be allowable due to past cases in Ohio.......... Readers unfamiliar with this dark subject of “source attribution” of a perpetrator should understand that in 1997, the bitemark identifiers were at their zenith of judicial acceptance. Descriptions of “a dental blueprint,” “a trademark,”  “novel science,” “crime fighter dentists,” “all people’s teeth are unique,” and “with reasonable medical certainty” abounded in court room testimony by these members of the ABFO and AAFS. It even got to the point that “bitemarks” are as good as fingerprints” and all 50 US states accepted it as gospel. So, if Prade’s teeth were were either consistent or matched with the bruise (the two prosecution opinions), and all human teeth are unique (the first commandment of bite-mark matchers), then the jury in 1997 had conclusive evidence of Prade’s guilt. Some of these cases used to permit bitemark-readers into every state are now on the Innocence Project’s list of exonerations.  Don’t expect the Akron DA to bring any of this up before this current judge. He just ridicules the thought that bitemark evidence can be disavowed or criticized as unreliable on the weight of its past mis-use and scientific ineptitude."
http://csidds.com/2015/11/05/disavowed-and-discredited-bitemark-evidence-in-prade-case-now-returns-with-new-dna-hearing-in-oh/