Dr. Adam Freeman, a former president of The American Board of Forensic Odontology who left because of concerns over the reliability of the science.(InvestigateTV) Shortly after he took over the board, Freeman asked his fellow forensic dentists to participate in a study to compare dozens of bite-marks with dental impressions. The study included 38 forensic dentists who evaluated 100 cases. The results shocked Freeman: The highly-trained experts were unable to agree on whether the bite marks matched the dental impressions — and some couldn’t confirm the samples were bite marks at all. Freeman resigned from the organization shortly after, concerned with the reliability of the science and the board’s decision not to conduct further studies on the issue. “I drank that Kool-Aid. I wanted to become board certified. That was going to be like the pinnacle of my career,” Freeman said. “And at the end of today, it’s just smoke and mirrors.” In his opinion, the American Board of Forensic Odontology is responsible for putting innocent people behind bars. “It’s just about telling the truth. There’s innocent people in jail convicted on this junk science. And bite marks are junk science. They are the epitome of junk science,” he said."
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GRAPHIC CAPTION: “A tool prosecutors have long used as powerful evidence is now considered by some to be "junk science.”
CONTENT WARNING: "This story contains a description of sexual assault."
GIST: "Judy Carnes remembers making the call like it was yesterday. She was trying to reach her mother on May 22, 1980, but a police officer picked up the phone instead.
“I asked him if someone was dead there. And he said, ‘Yes.’ So, I knew it was Grace,” said Carnes.
The officer was talking about 75-year-old Grace Perry, found dead inside her Rome, Georgia home. Carnes’ mother, Edith Polston, lived at the same house. The two were cousins, but Carnes said Perry was more like a mother to Polston.
Carnes said she knew it was Perry who died, and not her mother, because the officer told her Polston was recovering at a hospital after surviving an assault.
According to police, someone raped and murdered Perry with the handle of a yard rake. Polston never saw her attacker’s face.
“Had momma not escaped, I can’t imagine what her death would have been like,” Carnes said.
The next day, an officer escorted Carnes into the house to retrieve her mother’s clothes. Blood was everywhere.
“It was all over the bed, all over the floor, against the walls,” Carnes said.
Police immediately arrested 19-year-old James Rogers, who lived next door. Police found him trying to climb the fence behind Perry’s home.
According to the original police report, Rogers admitted to the crime.
“On the way to the Police Station, the suspect started screaming, ‘I killed her, I know what I done,” wrote the officer.
Detectives stopped short of calling it a confession.
It wasn’t Rogers’ first run-in with law enforcement. Police arrested him multiple times in the past, for charges involving theft, disorderly conduct and burglary.
During the investigation into Perry’s death, detectives noticed an injury on Rogers’ forearm they believed looked like a bitemark.
At the trial, renowned forensic dentist Dr. Richard Souviron testified with full certainty that the murder victim’s teeth matched the bite mark on Rogers.
Prosecutors reminded the jury that Dr. Souviron had just helped convict serial killer Ted Bundy, the first nationally-televised criminal trial in the U.S.
It didn’t take long for the jury to find Rogers guilty, sentencing him to death in 1985.
“An outrageously vile, horrible and inhumane murder,” wrote the jury foreperson, according to the verdict sheet.
“There is no doubt in my mind that Grace bit him,” said Carnes.
Nearly four decades later, Rogers is still alive. This past August, his lawyers argued before Floyd County Superior Court Judge Bryan Johnson that Rogers deserved a new trial after discovering new evidence.
The evidence centers on the alleged bitemark found on Rogers. The same forensic dentist who said Perry bit Rogers, now believes he got it wrong.
“I no longer believe — as I testified at Mr. Rogers’s trial — that Grace Perry’s teeth, to the exclusion of all others, inflicted the injury on Mr. Rogers forearm,” said Souviron in a 2020 affidavit.
Chris Fabricant, with The Innocence Project, is one of Rogers’ attorneys. He believes the jury convicted Rogers based on Souviron’s original testimony.
“[Souviron], who’s been made world famous by the Ted Bundy trial, a known superstar in the forensic field — you’re never going to question an expert like that,” Fabricant said. “We cannot execute somebody that we know that the evidence that was used at trial has been entirely discredited.”
One of them includes Shelia Denton, who was sentenced to life in prison for a 2004 murder in Waycross, Georgia.
Two years ago, Ware County Superior Court Judge Dwayne Gillis ruled the bite mark evidence used to convict Denton was unreliable and it should “never serve as a basis for a conviction.”
Denton says she spent nearly two decades in prison a crime she did not commit.
“I was mad because I missed almost 17 years of my life locked up without my family,” said Denton in an interview with InvestigateTV this past summer.
A new book published this year called ‘Junk Science’ highlights a long list of flawed forensics used by district attorneys across the country to help land guilty verdicts they did not prove.
It was written by Fabricant, one of Rogers’ attorneys.
The book breaks down the unreliability of burn mark, shoe print and comparative bullet lead analysis, among others, as well as the experts who made money giving bogus testimony in front of juries.
Fabricant said he believes Rogers is among those wrongfully imprisoned.
“What he really needs is a fair trial. One where there is no cheating with junk science and a fair judication of the facts of the case,” Fabricant said.
For decades, The American Board of Forensic Odontology, the organization that accredits forensic dentists, pushed back against skeptics who disagreed with its science. All that changed when Dr. Adam Freeman became its president in 2015.
Dr. Adam Freeman, a former president of The American Board of Forensic Odontology who left because of concerns over the reliability of the science.(InvestigateTV)
Shortly after he took over the board, Freeman asked his fellow forensic dentists to participate in a study to compare dozens of bite-marks with dental impressions. The study included 38 forensic dentists who evaluated 100 cases.
The results shocked Freeman: The highly-trained experts were unable to agree on whether the bite marks matched the dental impressions — and some couldn’t confirm the samples were bite marks at all.
Freeman resigned from the organization shortly after, concerned with the reliability of the science and the board’s decision not to conduct further studies on the issue.
“I drank that Kool-Aid. I wanted to become board certified. That was going to be like the pinnacle of my career,” Freeman said. “And at the end of today, it’s just smoke and mirrors.”
In his opinion, the American Board of Forensic Odontology is responsible for putting innocent people behind bars.
“It’s just about telling the truth. There’s innocent people in jail convicted on this junk science.
And bite marks are junk science. They are the epitome of junk science,” he said.
This past May, Freeman testified on behalf of Rogers’ defense team.
He told Judge Johnson that no forensic dentist today would be able to testify with full certainty that Perry bite Rogers. Freeman was not paid for providing his testimony.
Floyd County District Attorney Leigh Patterson declined to interviewed.
“It is a pending case and we do not comment on pending cases,” Patterson said in an email to InvestigateTV.
During the August hearing, Floyd County Assistant District Attorney Natalee Staats argued that Rogers didn’t deserve a new trial because there was ample evidence, unrelated to the bitemark testimony, that proved his guilt the first time.
“There were multiple people who heard Mr. Rogers say the following things, ‘I killed her, I’m a murderer. Momma, they got me, I’m gone this time. I killed her, and there’s nothing you can do about it,’” Staats said in court.
Rogers’ attorneys disagree. They point to their client claiming his innocence multiple times shortly after his arrest and for years after.
They also believe the district attorney at the time, Stephen Lanier, pushed the bitemark testimony at trial because there was no physical evidence or eyewitnesses to the crime.
“Where would we be without … Dr. Souviron?” Lanier said in his closing statement to the jury in 1985. “[Grace Perry’s] teeth do talk, and she’s telling you right now that she bit [James Rogers]. That’s the only verdict you can give.”
“And with that argument, the prosecution sealed Mr. Rogers’ fate.
There was no way a jury was going to acquit him when they learned that the teeth were talking,” said Mark Loudon-Brown during the August hearing.
Loudon-Brown is an attorney of the Southern Center for Human Rights, and is also part of Rogers’ defense team.
Where Carnes sits, the change in science isn’t enough to convince her the jury got it wrong.
“Everything improves over time. That’s what they had to work with way back then, but does everyone get a new trial because of it?” Carnes said. “They know they’re guilty. They do not want anyone left on death row and they will keep doing these until death row is emptied.”
The case is now in the hands of Judge Johnson, who will determine whether Rogers will get a new trial. There is no timeline for that decision."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resurce. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. 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/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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