POST: "The latest from the world of bite mark evidence," by Radley Balko, published by The Washington Post, on February 1, 2016.
GIST: "There have been some new developments and stories regarding the dubious forensic specialty of bite mark matching.".........The little scientific
research that has been done on bite mark analysis so far has cast doubt
on the field’s core assumptions. So it would be best to just exclude it
altogether. Judge Wahwassuck apparently doesn’t see it that way.
Unfortunately, thus far, neither has any other judge in the country who
has been asked to rule on the question directly."......... The final bite mark story comes from Louisiana, where defense
attorneys are invoking bite mark analysis in attempt to vindicate their
client. DNA testing has apparently implicated a man named Joenell Rubin
in a 27-year-old murder that had gone cold. But Rubin’s defense team
found an old letter from a forensic specialist claiming that bite marks
found on the victim were administered by someone other than Rubin. So
here we have defense attorneys doing what prosecutors are doing in Ohio
— asking a court to embrace bite mark evidence even in the face of DNA
evidence (although in the form of a very old letter that can’t be cross
examined). On the one hand, if prosecutors are going to continue to use
bite mark testimony, it doesn’t make much sense to ask defense attorneys
to unilaterally disarm. On the other hand, it’s hard to see how a
defense attorney could ethically submit evidence he or she knows is
fraudulent. I obviously have no idea if the defense attorneys in this
case honestly believe that bite mark analysis is scientifically valid.
But they shouldn’t get any more deference than prosecutors. This case
also is by no means the first time defense attorneys have tried to rely
on bite mark analysis. In some ways, it seems worse when
prosecutors deploy transparently bogus evidence because their obligation
is to seek justice, not to win convictions at any cost. A defense
attorney’s job is to vigorously defend his or her client, within a few
basic ethical boundaries. The real problem is that we’ve
entrusted judges to be the gatekeepers of science in the courtroom, and
they’ve fulfilled that function about as well as you might expect from
people trained in law, not science — pretty poorly. This sort of
evidence ought to be rejected no matter which side is trying to
introduce it." Radley
Balko blogs about criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties
for The Washington Post. He is the author of the book "Rise of the
Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces."
The entire post can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
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:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
