UP-DATE: PUTTING THE BITE ON DR. MICHAEL WEST; RADLEY BALKO'S LATEST EXPOSE;

"IN OCTOBER 2001, WORKING FOR PLOURD, A PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR NAMED JAMES RIX SENT WEST THE DECADE-OLD PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE BITE MARKS ON ANCONA’S BREAST. RIX TOLD WEST THAT THE PHOTOS WERE FROM THE THREE-YEAR-OLD UNSOLVED MURDER OF A COLLEGE STUDENT IN IDAHO. RIX THEN SENT WEST A DENTAL MOLD OF HIS OWN TEETH, BUT TOLD HIM THAT THEY CAME FROM THE CHIEF SUSPECT IN THE CASE. HE ALSO SENT A CHECK FOR $750, WEST'S RETAINER FEE."

RADLEY BALKO: REASON;

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As promised, Radley Balko has delivered his latest expose on Dr. Michael West - a "sting" video - on Reason Online;

The actual video can be accessed by cutting and pasting:

The expose appeared earlier today under the heading: "A Forensics Charlatan Gets Caught in the Act: Video from a defense attorney's sting exposes Mississippi bite-mark "expert" Michael West."

"In 1992, a Phoenix man named Ray Krone was convicted of murdering a cocktail waitress named Kim Ancona," the expose begins;

"The crime was brutal," it continues;

"Ancona had been sexually assaulted, stabbed multiple times, and bitten on her breast and neck. Krone was indicted after a local dentist named Scott Piette, who had received all of five days of forensic training, told police and prosecutors that Krone’s crooked teeth created the marks on Ancona’s body.

At trial, a more experienced bite-mark analyst from Las Vegas named Ray Rawson confirmed Piette's findings: The bite marks on Ancona’s neck could only have come from Krone. Rawson included a 39-page report with his testimony. It must have been convincing, because the jury convicted Krone despite no other physical evidence linking him to the crime. He was sentenced to death.

In 1995, Krone was given a new trial after an appeals court threw out his conviction over an unrelated legal technicality. Rawson testified again. And Krone was convicted again. After the second trial, however, the judge refused to sentence Krone to death, writing, "The court is left with a residual or lingering doubt about the clear identity of the killer."

The judge’s misgivings proved prescient. Over the strenuous objections of prosecutors, who maintained that Rawson’s testimony was in itself sufficient to affirm Krone’s conviction, Krone's attorney Christopher Plourd succeeded in getting a court to force the state to turn over biological evidence from the crime for DNA testing. The testing proved Krone was innocent. It also provided a match to Kenneth Phillips, a man who arguably should have been a suspect from the start. Phillips lived less than a mile from the crime scene, was already on probation for assaulting a female neighbor, and was arrested three weeks after Ancona’s murder for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl. Several witnesses had described a man fitting Phillips’ height, weight, and complexion to police near the crime scene the night of the murder.

After 10 years in prison, including two spent on death row, Ray Krone was exonerated and released from prison in 2002.

But Krone’s lawyer wasn’t quite finished. In addition to his job as a criminal defense attorney, Christopher Plourd is a legal specialist in forensic science, having served on several government commissions looking at the role of DNA testing in the criminal justice system.

Plourd was livid that his client could have been convicted not once, but twice, based on obviously erroneous testimony that was presented as scientific. It seemed to confirm what Plourd and other critics of bite-mark analysis have long suspected—that there is little "science" behind the method at all. So in 2001, the lawyer decided to conduct a “proficiency test” on some unknowing and prominent bite-mark expert.

Plourd chose Mississippi dentist Michael West for his test. West had long been under fire for dubious testimony in dozens of criminal cases, including one in which he claimed to be able to match the bite marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich found at the crime scene to the dentition of a defendant. I’ve written extensively on West over the last few years, most recently in a feature about the 1992 Louisiana murder trial and eventual conviction of Jimmie Duncan. In that case, I obtained a video showing West repeatedly jamming Duncan’s dental mold into the body of the young girl Duncan was accused of killing. Forensic specialists say that what West does in the video isn't a remotely acceptable method of analysis, and may amount to criminal evidence tampering. Duncan is on death row in Louisiana, based in part on West's analysis.

Plourd selected West because, even though the dentist was still active in the Mississippi and Louisiana courts, he had been suspended from the American Board of Forensic Odontology since the mid-1990s, and therefore might not be aware of the somewhat notorious Krone case. Plourd was right.

In October 2001, working for Plourd, a private investigator named James Rix sent West the decade-old photographs of the bite marks on Ancona’s breast. Rix told West that the photos were from the three-year-old unsolved murder of a college student in Idaho. Rix then sent West a dental mold of his own teeth, but told him that they came from the chief suspect in the case. He also sent a check for $750, West's retainer fee.

Two months later, West sent Rix a letter and accompanying 20-minute video. In the video, West meticulously explains the methodology he uses to match bite marks to dental molds. Using the photo of Ancona’s bitten breast and Rix's own dental mold, West then reaches the conclusion Plourd and Rix suspected he would: That the mold and the photos were a definite match.

"Notice as I flex the photograph across these teeth how it conforms to the outline very nicely," West explains confidently. "The odds of that happening if these weren’t the teeth that created this bite would be almost astronomical." He adds that the "matching" patterns he found between the photo and the dental mold "could only lead an odontologist to one opinion and that [is] these teeth did create that mark."

Though Plourd’s proficiency test has been noted in court briefs and law journals, this is the first time the video of West’s analysis has been published.

NOTE: The video below includes a photograph of bite marks on a post-mortem breast. Viewer discretion is advised."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

UP-DATE: DR. MICHAEL WEST: RADLEY BALKO TAKES ON HIS CLAIM THAT HE HAS "LOST FAITH IN THE SYSTEM;" RADLEY PROMISES TO LAUNCH NEW EXPOSE TOMORROW;

"WEST WAS ACCEPTED AS AN EXPERT BY COURTS ALL OVER THE SOUTH. BUT HE WAS ALSO GETTING CALLS BECAUSE PROSECUTORS DIDN'T HAVE ANY OTHER EVIDENCE, OR AT LEAST NOT ENOUGH TO ENSURE A CONVICTION. AND BECAUSE PROSECUTORS WERE SO EAGER TO WIN CONVICTIONS, THEY DIDN'T BOTHER TO LOOK AT WEST'S RIDICULOUS CLAIMS WITH ANY SKEPTICISM. ANY SCIENTIST WHO CLAIMS HE HAS DEVELOPED A TEST THAT ONLY HE CAN PERFORM, AND THAT CAN'T BE DUPLICATED OR PHOTOGRAPHED—AS WEST DID WITH HIS BLACK LIGHT AND YELLOW GOGGLES METHOD OF IDENTIFYING BITE MARKS—ISN'T A SCIENTIST."

RADLEY BALKO: REASON;

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Feisty journalist Radley Balko, who has played a pivotal role in bringing down Drs/ Michael West and Steven Hayne, returned to the attack yesterday, with a challenge to West's assertion to the Associated Press that he has "lost faith in the system."

"Tomorrow, I'll have another investigative piece here at Reason about self-proclaimed Mississippi bite mark expert, Dr. Michael West," Balko begins, in his Internet publication "Reason."

"This latest article details a sting an attorney set up on West that pretty conclusively shows West to be a fraud," he continues;.

"It's good timing, because earlier this month, West gave an interview to the A.P. in which he defended his court testimony over the years. The interview came in response to recent lawsuit filed by Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, two men convicted of separate rapes and murders almost entirely thanks to West's bite mark expertise. The two were later exonerated by DNA evidence. A third man has since confessed to both crimes.

Much of the interview consists of West's usual defense—that someone else must have raped and killed the victims while the men West helped convict bit them. It's absurd. It would require two boyfriends, on occasions two years apart, who lived within miles of one another, to have each bitten the young daughters of their girlfriends while a third man, the same man, raped and killed the girls.

But there are a couple of parts of the article that are worth addressing. First:

“What did I testify to that was incorrect? If they knew that they didn’t kill this child and I never testified that they killed this child, where have I torted them?” West said.

He "torted" them by giving testimony unsupported by any scientific literature (other than journal articles written by West himself), knowing full well that his testimony would be used to help convict them. West's behavior in the Jimmie Duncan case, which occurred at about the same time as the Brooks and Brewer cases, and which I wrote about last April, suggests that at the very least he at the time was employing a method of analysis that has been thoroughly discredited, even by other experts in the already suspect field of forensic odontology. That's at best. At worst, he was manufacturing evidence.

West, in court documents filed this week, also says his testimony wasn’t the basis of Brewer’s conviction, saying it wasn’t the “the centerpiece of the prosecution.”

This is false. The bite marks were the only physical evidence linking either Brooks or Brewer to either crime. Moreover, when DNA testing on the semen found in the victim initially cleared Kennedy Brewer back in 2002, District Attorney Forrest Allgood refused to exonerate Brewer, citing West's bite mark testimony as proof that even if Brewer didn't rape and kill the little girl, the bite marks West was able to match up showed Brewer must have had something to do with her death. Allgood's clinging to West's testimony kept Brewer in prison an extra five years.

Speaking of Allgood:

“I told Dr. West years ago that we were not going to use him anymore because, quite frankly, he carries too much baggage,” said District Attorney Forrest Allgood in Columbus. “You spent your whole trial defending him as opposed to trying the defendant.”

I don't know what Allgood means by "years ago," but again, he was relying on West's testimony as late as 2007 to keep Kennedy Brewer in jail. Allgood also continued using West well after West was suspended by the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in 1994. And note that Allgood doesn't say he stopped using West because West is unscientific. Only because it made it harder to win and protect convictions.

“I don’t want to do any more death information. I don’t want public office,” West said. “I’ve lost faith in the system.”

Tragic. Reminds me of the old Groucho Marx line, "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member."

District Attorney Ronnie Harper of Lauderdale County said West was once accepted as an expert by courts all over the South.

“This is not some witch doctor that people were calling because they didn’t have any other evidence. People thought the guy knew what he was talking about,” Harper said.

This is partially true. West was accepted as an expert by courts all over the south. But he was also getting calls because prosecutors didn't have any other evidence, or at least not enough to ensure a conviction. And because prosecutors were so eager to win convictions, they didn't bother to look at West's ridiculous claims with any skepticism. Any scientist who claims he has developed a test that only he can perform, and that can't be duplicated or photographed—as West did with his black light and yellow goggles method of identifying bite marks—isn't a scientist. And his test isn't science. Plenty of people in the forensics community were sending out red flags about West dating back to the early 1990s. Prosecutors refused to heed those warnings out of self-interest. The "everyone else was doing it" defense doesn't fly.

Alternate light imaging that West pioneered is still being used today, said Dr. Robert Barsley, a Louisiana State University dental professor and the secretary of the American Academy of Forensic Science.

“In fact, in dentistry today, it’s used to detect cancer,” said Barsley, a friend of West. Barsley acknowledged the attention surrounding West hasn’t helped the use of bite mark evidence at trial.

“Certainly in some cases, not only Dr. West’s cases, people disagreed with the results of odontology. Anytime you have disagreements that lessens the impact of the evidence,” Barsley said.

Penalty flag on the A.P reporter, here. It would probably be helpful to know that the expert defending West in this passage is not only a friend, but was actually a co-author on many of West's journal articles about the use of fluorescent light to identify bite marks. Barslay absolutely has an interest in defending West's methods, given that he helped popularize them. That should have been included in the article.

I hadn't heard that some form of West's methods for bite mark identification are now being use to detect cancer. That may be. But I'm not sure how that's relevant to their efficacy in identifying bite marks, and matching them to one suspect to the exclusion of everyone else.

Finally, Barsley's understatement of what's at stake here is laughable. This is not about "people" disagreeing with West's testimony. And it's not about the "impact" of odontological evidence. It's about near unanimity among forensic scientists that West has for years been giving testimony based on forensic methods that have zero basis in science. And he's been doing it to help put people in prison. Or send them to death row. West's methods are pretty roundly condemned even within the field of forensic odontology, a field that itself was recently lambasted by a report published by the National Academy of Sciences."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

UP-DATE: MISSISSIPPI'S MEDICAL EXAMINER SYSTEM; DR. STEVEN HAYNE PROVES TO BE A HARD ACT TO FOLLOW! MEDICAL EXAMINERS PROVIDED BY PRIVATE COMPANY;

"HAYNE WAS REMOVED FROM THE DESIGNATED LIST OF PATHOLOGISTS AFTER THE NEW YORK-BASED INNOCENCE PROJECT HAD ACCUSED HIM OF SLOPPY WORK AND HAD FILED A COMPLAINT WITH THE STATE BOARD OF MEDICAL LICENSURE, CALLING ON THE BOARD TO STRIP HIM OF HIS MEDICAL LICENSE.

AFTER EXAMINING THE ALLEGATIONS, THE BOARD OF MEDICAL LICENSURE SIDED WITH HAYNE. HAYNE IS NOW SUING INNOCENCE PROJECT OFFICIALS FOR DEFAMATION.

HAYNE ALSO IS BEING SUED, ALONG WITH HATTIESBURG DENTIST MICHAEL WEST, FOR THEIR TESTIMONY ABOUT THE 1992 RAPE AND SLAYING OF A 3-YEAR-OLD GIRL THAT LED TO THE DEATH SENTENCE FOR KENNEDY BREWER.

BREWER IS SUING THE PAIR FOR $18 MILLION. HE WAS FREED AFTER SPENDING 15 YEARS IN PRISON FOR A CRIME AUTHORITIES NOW SAY DNA SHOWS HE DID NOT COMMIT. ANOTHER MAN HAS BEEN CHARGED WITH THAT CRIME."

REPORTER JIMMIE E. GATES; THE CLARION LEDGER;

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As the following story by Clarion Ledger report Jimmie E. Gates tells us the State of Mississippi still has not repaired its seriously flawed medical examiner system;

"Efforts to hire the state's first medical examiner since the mid-1990s could be scaled back for some time," Gate's story, published today under the heading: "Finding a state medical examiner continues to drag on," begins;

""We have not found a suitable candidate," state Public Safety Commissioner Steve Simpson said last week. "We will continue to search," the story continues;

"A medical examiner is a key leadership position in death investigations. Mississippi has been criticized for years for not filling the position in the Department of Public Safety as well as not adequately funding it.

Simpson, who completed his first year as commissioner last week, said the reason for the delay in hiring probably is because of two factors:

The lack of available, board-certified forensic pathologists; and

Most forensic pathologists are performing other duties and, therefore, are paid more than the $250,000 annual salary the state is offering.

"We may look at raising the salary," Simpson said.

The state's last medical examiner, Emily Ward, left in 1995 and the position has been vacant since.

Last year, state lawmakers allocated $500,000 in one-time money toward the office.

Lawmakers have said they'll continue to support the office, but funds will be harder to come by during this recession.

Simpson said the delay in hiring will allow the state time to get a permanent salary in place.

In the meantime, the state will advertise for proposals from companies to perform autopsies.

For years, many counties had relied on Dr. Steve Hayne to do autopsies. But in August, Simpson removed Hayne from a list of approved pathologists.

The state has contracted with Forensic Medical Inc. of Nashville to conduct autopsies here. The company is paid $1,000 per autopsy.

Simpson said he has heard of no complaints from coroners about the company.

Jefferson Davis County Coroner Greg Blackwell said the company has worked well for his county.

Hayne was removed from the designated list of pathologists after the New York-based Innocence Project had accused him of sloppy work and had filed a complaint with the state Board of Medical Licensure, calling on the board to strip him of his medical license.

After examining the allegations, the Board of Medical Licensure sided with Hayne. Hayne is now suing Innocence Project officials for defamation.

Hayne also is being sued, along with Hattiesburg dentist Michael West, for their testimony about the 1992 rape and slaying of a 3-year-old girl that led to the death sentence for Kennedy Brewer.

Brewer is suing the pair for $18 million. He was freed after spending 15 years in prison for a crime authorities now say DNA shows he did not commit. Another man has been charged with that crime.

Simpson said he is certain the Nashville company will be one of the bidders to provide the services during the next fiscal year that begins July 1.

The company could not be reached for comment last week. The company rotates a pathologist every week to perform autopsies in Mississippi. The pathologist works out of the medical examiner's office at the state Crime Lab."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

UPDATE; LEVON BROOKS AND KENNEDY BREWER; ASSOCIATED PRESS REPORTS DR. MICHAEL WEST'S RESPONSE TO THEIR FEDERAL LAWSUITS;

“DISTRICT ATTORNEY RONNIE HARPER OF LAUDERDALE COUNTY SAID WEST WAS ONCE ACCEPTED AS AN EXPERT BY COURTS ALL OVER THE SOUTH.

"THIS IS NOT SOME WITCH DOCTOR THAT PEOPLE WERE CALLING BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY OTHER EVIDENCE. PEOPLE THOUGHT THE GUY KNEW WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT," HARPER SAID.”

REPORTER SHELIA BYRD: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS;
PHOTOS: LEVON BROOKS (RIGHT); KENNEDY BREWER (LEFT);

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Dr. Michael West purports to have "lost faith in the system" in an interview with the Associated Press on the topic of the federal lawsuits launched by Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer in connection with their wrongful convictions;

"JACKSON, Miss. -- Dr. Michael West was once one of the go-to forensics experts for prosecutors across the country, having built a reputation for success in tying suspects to a crime, particularly when it came to bite marks," the story by reporter Shelia Byrd begins, under the heading "Miss. bite-mark expert breaks silence for lawsuit."

"In recent years, as more of his expert testimony has come into question, West has kept a low profile, declining to publicly defend himself against allegations some of his techniques were bogus," the story, published on May 1, 2009, continues;

"The Hattiesburg dentist has broken his silence in response to federal lawsuits filed by two Mississippi men sent to prison in separate cases more than a decade ago for crimes they didn't commit. Kennedy Brewer, who spent several years on death row, and Levon Brooks argue they were convicted of the brutal deaths of two children, in large part, because West had testified they left bite marks on the victims.

In an interview with The Associated Press, West defended his testimony, saying he never said either suspect had raped or murdered the girls.

"I testified that both of these men had bitten these children while they were alive. The bite marks were inflicted ante-mortem. As to who killed them and who raped them, I don't know and I did not testify to," West said.

Dr. Steven Hayne, a former state pathologist who conducted autopsies on the girls' bodies, had first identified the marks in the 1990s.

The lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Jackson contend West and Hayne acted with malice and reckless disregard for the plaintiffs' constitutional rights. They also said both men were acting under what is known as "the color of law" - meaning the alleged crime was committed while they were acting in their official capacities.

"What did I testify to that was incorrect? If they knew that they didn't kill this child and I never testified that they killed this child, where have I torted them?" West said.

One of West's defenses is that Brooks and Brewer waited too long to file their lawsuits. Brewer was convicted of capital murder in 1995 and sentenced to death for raping and killing 3-year-old Christine Jackson. Brooks was convicted in 1992 and sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of Courtney Smith. She also was 3.

West, in court documents filed this week, also says his testimony wasn't the basis of Brewer's conviction, saying it wasn't the "the centerpiece of the prosecution."

A panel of forensic experts that later examined the Brewer case said the wounds on Christine were not human bites, but were probably caused by crawfish and insects nibbling on the corpse, decomposition and rough handling when the body was pulled from the pond where it was found.

The two men were cleared of the charges in 2008 after a third man allegedly confessed to both murders.

The Innocence Project, a New York-based attorneys group that works on behalf of inmates believed to be wrongly convicted, is reviewing other cases that involved Hayne and West.

West's answer to the litigation tracks that of Hayne, who is represented by Jackson attorney Dale Danks Jr.

West filed his court documents himself. He said he cannot afford to hire an attorney to defend himself in three lawsuits. Brewer has also filed suit against him in state court.

West is now shunned by some of the district attorneys who used to rely on his expertise to aid prosecutions.

"I told Dr. West years ago that we were not going to use him anymore because, quite frankly, he carries too much baggage," said District Attorney Forrest Allgood in Columbus. "You spent your whole trial defending him as opposed to trying the defendant."

Allgood had prosecuted Brooks and Brewer on the murder charges.

West's credibility came under attack in his testimony in a 1993 murder case. Prosecutors had used bite marks from a partially eaten sandwich found at the victim's home to build a case against Calvin Banks of West Point. West had linked Banks to the crime after examining the sandwich, but then he threw it away. Banks was convicted, but it was later overturned by the state Supreme Court because of the missing evidence.

West resigned from the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in 1994 and the American Board of Forensic Odontology in 2006 after ethics complaints were brought against him.

West said he's given testimony over 80 times in 10 states and has conducted over 16,000 death investigations over a 30-year career, but now he only practices dentistry at a clinic in Hattiesburg.

"I don't want to do any more death information. I don't want public office," West said. "I've lost faith in the system."

District Attorney Ronnie Harper of Lauderdale County said West was once accepted as an expert by courts all over the South.

"This is not some witch doctor that people were calling because they didn't have any other evidence. People thought the guy knew what he was talking about," Harper said.

Harper said West never worked a case with him. But years ago, the dentist was called in to verify a woman's suicide in Lauderdale County. He did so by detecting gunmetal residue on her fingers, Harper said.

Alternate light imaging that West pioneered is still being used today, said Dr. Robert Barsley, a Louisiana State University dental professor and the secretary of the American Academy of Forensic Science.

"In fact, in dentistry today, it's used to detect cancer," said Barsley, a friend of West.

Barsley acknowledged the attention surrounding West hasn't helped the use of bite mark evidence at trial.

"Certainly in some cases, not only Dr. West's cases, people disagreed with the results of odontology. Anytime you have disagreements that lessens the impact of the evidence," Barsley said."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

MARK DALLAGHER CASE: PART FIVE; UNRAVELLING OF AN "EXPERT"; A LONG OVERDUE BLOW TO EARPRINT COMPARISON EVIDENCE; THE TELEGRAPH;

"THE APPEAL COURT AIRED CONCERNS ABOUT MR VAN DER LUGT'S EXPERTISE. HE WAS A POLICE OFFICER OF 27 YEARS EXPERIENCE BUT HAD NO FORMAL QUALIFICATIONS. HE HAD "SIMPLY BECOME INTERESTED IN EAR PRINT IDENTIFICATION".

THE JUDGES RULED DALLAGHER'S CONVICTION UNSAFE BUT ORDERED THAT HE REMAIN IN PRISON PENDING A RETRIAL.

THAT HEARING BEGAN IN MANCHESTER LAST JUNE BUT WAS HALTED AFTER THE RECEIPT OF NEW EVIDENCE AND THE LAUNCH OF A FRESH INQUIRY. IT RESUMED YESTERDAY WITH THE CROWN SAYING IT WOULD OFFER NO EVIDENCE. THE DEFENCE REVEALED THAT DNA FROM ONE OF THE ORIGINAL EARPRINTS SHOWED IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MADE BY DALLAGHER."

THE TELEGRAPH:

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The unravelling of earprint evidence in Europe and North America was described in a story which appeared in The Telegraph on January 22, 2004, without a by-line, under the heading, "'Breakthrough' looks less and less convincing."

The sad part of the story is that Mark Dallagher remained behind bars for seven horrific years as a murderer while the reputations of Cornelis van der Lugt and his pseudo science became unravelled.

Although several people had been convicted in England because of earprint evidence - which the courts had begun to accept as fact - it had become apparent, however, that there is little scientific basis for this.

The reality was that experts did not have a database of earprints, nor a scientific method of comparing prints, apart from laying the suspect's print on top of the one found at the scene and examining them for differences.

Prof Peter von Coppen, of Leiden University in Holland, had issued a paper disputing earprint evidence in which he said: "There has been no research done in which you can say, for instance, what the national distribution of lobes is, so you don't know if the earprint is one which would match 80 per cent of everyone else's or whether it has unique characteristics."

Far too many innocent persons would have been avoided horrific consequences - including the death penalty - if judges had exercised their gate-keeper function and protected them from so-called experts such as, Charles Smith, Michael West, Steven Hayne, Louise Robbins and Cornelis van der Vugt.

"Two smudged earprints made by a burglar who pressed his head to Dorothy Woods's window before jemmying it open were the only clues police found when they discovered the 94-year-old spinster murdered in her bed," the Telegraph story began.

"The West Yorkshire police turned to Cornelis van der Lugt, a Dutch former scenes of crime officer who had made himself the world expert in the fledgling science of earprint identification," it continued;

"At the trial of 26-year-old Mark Dallagher, it was the Dutchman's testimony that sealed a conviction.

Prof Peter Vanezis, a leading British forensic scientist, did not go quite as far as Mr van der Lugt in saying the evidence pointed to Dallagher, but said he thought it "highly likely" that Dallagher left his earmarks on the window above Miss Woods's bed.

The case was hailed as representing an important breakthrough in forensic techniques. "We now have another weapon in our arsenal against crime," said one investigating officer.

The Crown Prosecution Service went further, claiming in its 1999 annual report that the case had "made legal history".

But even as that report was published, the scientific evidence underpinning the conviction was unravelling.

A court in the United States upheld an appeal by David Kunze who had been convicted of aggravated murder on the evidence of Mr van der Lugt that his earprints had been found at the crime scene. The judges said Mr van der Lugt's theories on earprints were "not generally accepted in the forensic science community" and his evidence should have been inadmissible.

In May 2000 a court in Amsterdam overturned a conviction in another case where van der Lugt had given expert evidence. The Dutch court said that the infant discipline of earprinting should be treated "with caution and reservations".

Dallagher continued to protest his innocence, claiming that he had been at home with his girlfriend on the night of the killing in 1996. His appeal was heard in July 2002.

The Appeal Court aired concerns about Mr van der Lugt's expertise. He was a police officer of 27 years experience but had no formal qualifications. He had "simply become interested in ear print identification".

The judges ruled Dallagher's conviction unsafe but ordered that he remain in prison pending a retrial.

That hearing began in Manchester last June but was halted after the receipt of new evidence and the launch of a fresh inquiry. It resumed yesterday with the Crown saying it would offer no evidence. The defence revealed that DNA from one of the original earprints showed it could not have been made by Dallagher.

Despite Dallagher's acquittal, Mr van der Lugt told The Telegraph that his faith in earprinting remained strong. He is involved in a multi-million pound European Union-funded research project that aims to produce European earprinting standards."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

DOUGLAS PLUDE CASE: PART ONE: JUNK SCIENCE IN WISCONSIN; PROSECUTORS STILL DON'T GET IT; LOOKING FOR WOMAN TO STICK HEAD IN TOILET; ASSOCIATED PRESS;

"SHAIBANI SAID THAT, BASED ON HIS TESTS INVOLVING VOLUNTEERS HE POSITIONED AT A TOILET, PLUDE HAD TO BE LYING ABOUT THE POSITIONS HE CLAIMED TO HAVE FOUND HIS WIFE IN. GENELL PLUDE ALSO COULD NOT HAVE INHALED TOILET WATER ON HER OWN AND SOMEONE MUST HAVE FORCED HER HEAD INTO THE WATER, HE TESTIFIED.

DEFENSE LAWYERS FROM ACROSS THE COUNTRY HAVE DERIDED THE TESTS AND CALL THEM AN EXAMPLE OF UNFAIR EXPERT TESTIMONY. ONE OF THEM, NORTH CAROLINA LAWYER DAVID RUDOLF, WHO CLASHED WITH SHAIBANI IN ANOTHER CASE, LAUGHED ABOUT THE TESTS IN AN INTERVIEW LAST YEAR.

"HE HAD WOMEN STICKING THEIR HEADS IN TOILETS!" HE SAID. "THAT'S JUST NOT SCIENCE. HOW DO YOU PEER REVIEW THAT? HOW DO YOU TEST HIS CONCLUSIONS?""

RYAN J. FOLEY; ASSOCIATED PRESS;

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Three cheers to the Associated Press for exposing the efforts of Wisconsin prosecutors to introduce evidence on a par with Michael West and Steven Haynes's bite marks, Louise Robbin's "Cinderella" footprints, Cornelis van der Lugt's earprints and Dr. Charles Smith's incriminating observations during autopsies that no-one else could see.

As defence lawyer David Rudolf put it: "He had women sticking their heads in toilets...That's just not science. How do you peer review that? How do you test his conclusions?

Fortunately the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out Douglas Plude's 2002 homicide conviction - and he is out of custody on bail pending a new trial - but as the Associated Press story indicates, the prosecutors are soldiering on.

The A.P. story, by reporter Ryan Foley under the date-line Madison, Wis. ran yesterday under the heading "Toilet test contentious issue in Wis. slaying case."

"If you are a female about 5 feet 8 inches tall, 140 pounds and willing to stick your head in a toilet, a northern Wisconsin prosecutor wants your help in proving a high-profile homicide case," the story begins;

"The Vilas County district attorney plans to recruit volunteers for a second round of controversial tests designed to prove that a woman was drowned by her husband in a toilet — and didn't commit suicide as he claims," the story continues;

"The experiments involve positioning women the size of the late Genell Plude of Land O' Lakes at a toilet to determine whether the version of events told by her husband, Douglas Plude, is plausible.

Defense lawyers say it's junk science.

Plude, 42, was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide in 2002. But the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the conviction last year after learning that an expert witness who conducted the first round of toilet tests exaggerated his credentials. Plude has been released from prison pending the second trial, which is expected to begin in October.

Prosecutors contend Plude murdered his 28-year-old wife because she was about to leave him. They say he poisoned her with a migraine drug and pushed her face into the toilet to drown her while she vomited.

Plude says his wife was depressed, committed suicide by taking the pills on her own and then drowned. He claims he found his wife slumped over the vomit-filled toilet and tried to perform CPR to keep her alive.

Prosecutors called on expert witness Saami Shaibani to shoot down Plude's story at the first trial.

Shaibani said that, based on his tests involving volunteers he positioned at a toilet, Plude had to be lying about the positions he claimed to have found his wife in. Genell Plude also could not have inhaled toilet water on her own and someone must have forced her head into the water, he testified.

Defense lawyers from across the country have derided the tests and call them an example of unfair expert testimony. One of them, North Carolina lawyer David Rudolf, who clashed with Shaibani in another case, laughed about the tests in an interview last year.

"He had women sticking their heads in toilets!" he said. "That's just not science. How do you peer review that? How do you test his conclusions?"

The state high court ordered a new trial for Plude after discovering Shaibani lied about being a clinical associate professor at Temple University who taught physicians and surgeons there about injuries. He had no relationship with Temple; years earlier he had a "loose courtesy affiliation" that gave him parking privileges but little else.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice is considering whether to charge Shaibani with perjury.

Unfazed by the controversy, Vilas County District Attorney Al Moustakis has hired Christopher Damm of the Milwaukee School of Engineering to do a second round of tests. Judge Neal Nielsen III last month granted his request to allow the testing of the toilet and a floor display of the bathroom in the court's custody.

"The testing is likely to be the same type of testing that Shaibani did," Moustakis said.

Prosecutors routinely re-create crime scenes to prove their theories of crimes and hire accident reconstruction experts to analyze what might have caused someone's death, said Gerald Mowris, former president of the Wisconsin Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

"It's really a question of, is the testing done properly, is it done according to scientifically accepted standards and is it by someone who is a qualified expert?" he said. "There are people who hold themselves out as experts who aren't experts. That's a major issue."

He added: "The type of test you're describing — whether someone could drown in a toilet or would need help — I'm not sure the type of expert who would be able to testify about that. I don't know what the purported qualifications of the new expert is. The old one was essentially a charlatan."

Damm, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, said he is a consultant in accident reconstruction and has testified in civil cases but this would be his first criminal case.

He said he was still reviewing testimony from the first trial and hadn't yet designed the tests, which are expected to take place in June, but agreed they would be similar to Shaibani's.

As for claims that it's junk science, he said: "I don't think you can make blanket statements like that. It would take an understanding of why the tests are being done and the methods that were used."

Moustakis noted Shaibani's conclusions were in line with some of the other evidence, including bruising Genell Plude had on her neck.

Other medical testimony was inconclusive on the cause of death.

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

PERSPECTIVE: HOW RADLEY BALKO'S PROBING JOURNALISM LED TO DR. STEVEN HAYNE'S DEMISE; (ALTHOUGH STATE OFFICIALS CONTINUED TO DEFEND HIM!)

"EVEN IN FIRING HAYNE, SIMPSON TEMPERED HIS PRESS CONFERENCE WITH PRAISE FOR THE DOCTOR. ATTORNEY GENERAL JIM HOOD, WHO FREQUENTLY USED HAYNE WHEN HE WAS A DISTRICT ATTORNEY, ALSO VIGOROUSLY DEFENDED HIM IN THE LOCAL PRESS. SIMPSON SAID HIS AGENCY HAS NO INTENTION OF REVIEWING ANY CASES WHERE HAYNE HAS TESTIFIED. HE HAD "NO COMMENT" ON THE PERSISTENT ALLEGATIONS THAT HAYNE HAS REPEATEDLY GIVEN FALSE AND IMPROPER TESTIMONY DURING HIS 20-YEAR REIGN. HAYNE WAS TO REMAIN ON CONTRACT WITH THE STATE FOR AN ADDITIONAL 90 DAYS TO COMPLETE A BACKLOG OF 400 TO 500 AUTOPSY REPORTS."

RADLEY BALKO; REASON;

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Radley Balko described the State of Mississippi's decision to fire Dr. Steven Hayne in the November 2008, edition of reason.

"In our November 2007 issue, reason exposed some significant problems with Mississippi's forensic system," his story began.

"The article focused on Steven Hayne, the doctor who for two decades has conducted the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies. (Hayne says he performs 1,500 to 1,800 autopsies per year, an impossibly high number.) reason interviewed medical examiners across the country who reviewed Hayne's work and found it sloppy and incompetent, and who cited several examples where Hayne's trial testimony may have put innocent men in prison," he continued.

"Drawing on reason's reporting, the criminal justice advocacy organization the Innocence Project called on Mississippi to bar Hayne from doing any more autopsies in the state. On August 5, the state finally severed its ties with Hayne. Commissioner of Public Safety Stephen Simpson announced that Hayne would be removed from the state's list of approved medical examiners and that Mississippi would begin contracting its criminal autopsies to a private firm in Nashville.

The case against Hayne was strengthened by the February release of two men, Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, from the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman. Brewer and Brooks were both accused of raping and killing young girls in the early 1990s in similar crimes that occurred within miles of each other. Brooks was sentenced to life in prison, Brewer to death. Hayne performed the autopsy in both cases, and in both cases Hayne and the disgraced forensic odontologist Michael West identified bite marks on the bodies of the victims that they say implicated the defendants. DNA testing later showed both men were innocent. Also in February, police arrested Albert Johnson, who confessed to both crimes.

Even in firing Hayne, Simpson tempered his press conference with praise for the doctor. Attorney General Jim Hood, who frequently used Hayne when he was a district attorney, also vigorously defended him in the local press. Simpson said his agency has no intention of reviewing any cases where Hayne has testified. He had "no comment" on the persistent allegations that Hayne has repeatedly given false and improper testimony during his 20-year reign. Hayne was to remain on contract with the state for an additional 90 days to complete a backlog of 400 to 500 autopsy reports.

The New York and Mississippi Innocence Projects say they're looking at more than 200 cases where Hayne gave improper testimony and may have helped convict an innocent person."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

BREAKING NEWS: KENNEDY BREWER AND LEVON BROOKS FILE FEDERAL CIVIL RIGHTS LAWSUIT AGAINST HAYNE AND WEST;

"“IT TOOK A WHILE TO SERVE THEM WITH THE PAPERS BECAUSE IT WAS HARD TO TRACK DOWN WEST,” MCDUFF SAID.

ATTORNEY ROBIN ROBERTS OF HATTIESBURG, WHO HAS REPRESENTED WEST IN OTHER CASES, SAID HE HAD NOT SEEN WEST, WHOSE DENTIST OFFICE IS NOW CLOSED, IN AT LEAST A YEAR.”

RADLEY BALKO: THE AGITATOR; PHOTOS; LEVON BROOKS (LEFT); KENNEDY BREWER (RIGHT);
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Radley Balko reports in The Agitator that over the weekend, Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Steven Hayne and Michael West. This part of the story is interesting:

"The lawsuits filed in February represent only one side of the legal argument," Balko reported earlier today.

"Plaintiffs’ attorney Rob McDuff of Jackson said Friday he’s still waiting for a response from West," Balko continued;

"“It took a while to serve them with the papers because it was hard to track down West,” McDuff said.

Attorney Robin Roberts of Hattiesburg, who has represented West in other cases, said he had not seen West, whose dentist office is now closed, in at least a year.

In cases just two years apart, Brooks and Brewer were each convicted of raping and murdering the young daughters of their girlfriends, almost entirely due to the bite mark testimony Hayne and West gave at trial.

Between them, the two men served more than 30 years in prison. Brewer spent most of his time on death row. Both were released last year after a check of the state’s DNA database matched a man named Justin Albert Johnson. Johnson then confessed to both crimes."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

PERSPECTIVE: KENNEDY BREWER AND LEVON BROOKS; MISSISSIPPI'S FAILURE TO COME TO GRIPS WITH INJUSTICE; GREAT JOURNALISM FROM RADLEY BALKO;

"MEANWHILE, AS HAYNE CONTINUES TO DO AUTOPSIES AND TESTIFY, DEFENSE ATTORNEYS IN A HANDFUL OF CASES HAVE ATTEMPTED TO IMPEACH HIM BY CITING MY REPORTING, AS WELL AS THE OTHER CRITICISM FROM HAYNE'S PEERS. THE COURTS HAVE DISMISSED THESE MOTIONS. THEY ALSO OFTEN REFUSE EVEN TO GIVE AN INDIGENT DEFENDANT FUNDS TO HIRE HIS OWN EXPERT TO REVIEW HAYNE'S WORK, LEAVING HAYNE AS THE ONLY MEDICAL EXPERT TO TESTIFY AT TRIAL."

RADLEY BALKO: SLATE;

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In recent posts I have focused on journalist Radley Balko's unflinching battle to expose the unwillingness of the Mississippi criminal justice system to correct its lethal errors - and the poisonous role played by Doctors Michael West and Steve Haynes (The Bite-Marks Men) in serving up wrongful convictions to the state.

In the light of a recent developments - including the lawsuit launched by Mssrs. Brooks and Kennedy last week, it is worth revisiting Balko's article "The Bite-Marks Men: Mississippi's criminal forensics disaster," on Wednesday February 20.

"Between them, Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks served more than 30 years in Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi," the article begins;

"Brewer was sentenced to death, Brooks to life without parole," it continues;

"The crimes for which each was convicted are remarkably similar: A female toddler was abducted from her home, raped, murdered, and abandoned in the woods. In each case, Mississippi District Attorney Forrest Allgood decided early on that the boyfriend of the girl's mother was the culprit. In each case, he asked Dr. Steven Hayne to perform the autopsy. And in each case, Dr. Hayne called in Dr. Michael West to perform some analysis of bite marks on the children. West claimed to have found bite marks that had been missed by other medical professionals and then testified in court that he could definitively match these marks to the teeth of the men Allgood suspected of committing the murders.

In each case, West was wrong. Two weeks ago, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood announced that police had arrested 51-year-old Albert Johnson for the toddlers' murders. Johnson's DNA matched that found at the scene in both crimes. And according to Hood, when confronted with the evidence, Johnson confessed to both crimes. Brewer and Brooks were released from prison last week. These may turn out to be the first in a string of exonerations we'll see coming out of Mississippi. For the last 20 years, the state's criminal autopsy system has been in disrepair. Nearly every institution in the state has failed to do anything about it.

Last November, I wrote an investigative feature for Reason magazine about all of this, focusing in particular on the way in which Dr. Hayne has come to monopolize the state's autopsy business. I was astonished by what I found. Contrary to the story lines on shows such as CSI, forensics is far from an exact science. Even something seemingly as precise as DNA testing still requires careful preservation of evidence and is subject to human error and malfeasance. One key problem is that forensics labs often fall under the auspices of prosecutors. Even honest crime-lab workers, medical examiners, and other experts can be subtly influenced to make evidence conform to a prosecutor's wishes. In recent years, scandals have rocked crime labs across the country, even labs once considered world-class, such as the FBI's crime lab and the state lab in Virginia. In Mississippi, what's especially troubling is that state officials have had plenty of warning that something is wrong, and they've steadfastly refused to do anything about it.

According to the National Association of Medical Examiners, a doctor should perform no more than 250 autopsies per year. Dr. Hayne has testified that he performs 1,200 to 1,800 autopsies per year. Sources I spoke with who have visited Hayne's practice say he and his assistants will frequently have multiple bodies open at once, sometimes smoking cigars and even eating sandwiches while moving from corpse to corpse. They prefer to work at night, adding to their macabre reputation.

Hayne isn't board-certified in forensic pathology, though he often testifies that he is. The only accepted certifying organization for forensic pathology is the American Board of Pathology. Hayne took that group's exam in the 1980s and failed it. Hayne's pal Dr. West is even worse. West has been subject to exposés by 60 Minutes, Time, and Newsweek. He once claimed he could definitively trace the bite marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich left at the crime scene back to the defendant. He has compared his bite-mark virtuosity to Jesus Christ and Itzhak Perlman. And he claims to have invented a revolutionary system of identifying bite marks using yellow goggles and iridescent light that, conveniently, he says can't be photographed or duplicated.

Mississippi's system is set up in a way that increases the pressure on forensics experts to find what prosecutors want them to find. The state is one of several that elect county coroners to oversee death investigations. The office requires no medical training, only a high-school diploma, and it commonly goes to the owner of the local funeral home. If a coroner suspects a death may be due to criminal activity, he'll consult with the district attorney or sheriff, then send the body to a private-practice medical examiner for an autopsy. The problem here is that a medical examiner who returns unsatisfactory results to a prosecutor jeopardizes his chance of future referrals. Critics say Hayne has become the preferred medical examiner for Mississippi's coroners and district attorneys, because they can rely on him to deliver the diagnoses they're looking for.

Under state law, this whole process is supposed to be overseen by a board-certified state medical examiner. The last two people to hold that office, Dr. Lloyd White from 1988 to 1992 and Dr. Emily Ward from 1993 to 1995, were appalled at the way the state was handling death investigations. Both tried to implement reforms. And both were met with fiery resistance. Dr. Ward's tenure was particularly raucous. West (who at the time was the elected county coroner for Forrest County) circulated a petition signed by slightly more than half the state's coroners calling for her resignation. The legislature has largely refused to fund the office since. It's been vacant since 1995.

Meanwhile, as Hayne continues to do autopsies and testify, defense attorneys in a handful of cases have attempted to impeach him by citing my reporting, as well as the other criticism from Hayne's peers. The courts have dismissed these motions. They also often refuse even to give an indigent defendant funds to hire his own expert to review Hayne's work, leaving Hayne as the only medical expert to testify at trial.

That's what happened in the case of Jeffrey Havard, on death row in Parchman for killing his girlfriend's infant daughter. Before trial, Havard's lawyer asked the court for money to hire an outside expert, citing concerns about Hayne's credibility. The request was denied. After Havard's conviction, his legal team was able to get former Alabama State Medical Examiner Dr. Jim Lauridson to review Hayne's work. Lauridson found it lacking, to say the least. He told me last fall that Havard's case is "a travesty of justice." Yet in a ruling Kafka would not believe, the Mississippi Supreme Court refused to even consider Lauridson's review of Hayne's autopsy. The review was new evidence, the court determined, and should have been introduced at trial.

After the Brewer and Brooks exonerations last week, the Innocence Project's Peter Neufeld called for an investigation into Hayne and West. Even before that investigation happens, Hayne and West should stop testifying or doing autopsies. The state also needs to review every case in which either of these two men has ever testified; such investigations have followed forensic scandals in West Virginia, Oklahoma City, Houston, and other places.

As those other scandals indicate, Mississippi certainly isn't the first state to have problems with its forensics system. The difference is that other jurisdictions have responded with thorough investigations and honest efforts to correct deficiencies and repair damage done. Over the years, Mississippi has had ample such opportunities, and state officials have done nothing. Perhaps more exonerations will force the state to change its bad ways. But thus far, there's no sign of that: In a recent article that ran in Jackson's Clarion-Ledger, Attorney General Hood defended Hayne's integrity and expertise, even as he was exonerating Brewer and Brooks, two men wrongly imprisoned due in part to Hayne's work.

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

UPDATE: WEST AND HAYNE; KENNEDY BREWER AND LEVON BROOKS FILE LAWSUITS;

"A DISCREDITED FORENSIC DENTIST, MICHAEL WEST, TESTIFIED AT BOTH TRIALS THAT MARKS ON THE VICTIM’S BODIES PROVED THAT BROOKS AND BREWER BIT THE VICTIMS – USING ONLY THEIR TOP TWO TEETH. IN NEW STATEMENTS PUBLISHED TODAY BY ABC NEWS, INNOCENCE PROJECT CO-DIRECTOR PETER NEUFELD SAYS THAT WEST’S ACTIONS IN THESE CASES WAS “CRIMINAL.”"

INNOCENCE PROJECT;

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The Jackson News reports that Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks have filed federal the federal lawsuits in a story that appeared on April 3, 2009, under the heading, "Exonerated Miss. Men Sue Over Bite Mark Testimony."

"JACKSON, Miss. -- Two Mississippi men wrongfully sent to prison have filed federal lawsuits against the medical experts whose testimony led to their murder convictions," the story begins;

"Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks have filed suit in U.S. District Court in Jackson against dentist Dr. Michael West and Dr. Steven Hayne, a former state pathologist," the story continues;

"The suits seek unspecified damages and contend the actions of Hayne and West were committed with malice and reckless disregard for the plaintiffs' constitutional rights.

Hayne's attorney Dale Danks filed a response in federal court on Friday asking that the suits against Hayne be dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired. Danks also said Hayne has immunity under a state law that protects state employees from legal action. West has not filed a response."

The lawsuits were filed shortly after the two wrongly convicted men learned that they would receive compensation.

As Lindsay Brown reported on WTOK-TV on April 1, 2009, under the heading: "Brewer, Brooks Reflect and Look Forward, "Two Noxubee County men who were cleared of murder convictions in 2008 have received news that is certain to change their lives."

"Levon Brooks is a different man today than he was a year ago. He's all smiles after learning that he and Kennedy Brewer are set to receive $500,000 each after spending 16 years in prison for crimes they didn't commit. Brewer spent several of those years on death row," Brown's story continued;

"Parchman didn't prepare these men for life on the other side. Both have found getting and keeping decent paying jobs difficult. But this week's news has dramatically lifted their spirits.

Brewer and Brooks say getting the money isn't just about buying material items; it's about helping their families. Both men have sick mothers who they will now be able to financially support.

But they say the hardest part this last year has been letting go of what they experienced behind bars.

At Newscenter 11's interview Wednesday, Brooks was wearing an Innocence Project T-shirt, honoring the group that fought to see him released from prison, fought for a new law requiring the state to keep DNA evidence in felony investigations, and finally made the case for compensation.

"It really didn't involve a lot of debate," said Tucker Carrington, director of The Innocence Project. "Many thought it was the right thing to do."

But for Brooks and Brewer say this will soon all be behind them. Kennedy is set to get married in coming weeks, while Brooks spends his days fishing, hunting and drawing."

By way of background, the Innocence Project issued a release on February 20, under the heading, "Fallout continues after Mississippi exoneration," which noted that:

"Days after Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks were cleared in Mississippi, new questions are being raised about the forensic analysts and prosecutor who secured their convictions. Both men were wrongfully convicted of killing three-year-old girls in the early 1990s served 15 years behind bars before they were cleared. Brewer served several years on death row.

A discredited forensic dentist, Michael West, testified at both trials that marks on the victim’s bodies proved that Brooks and Brewer bit the victims – using only their top two teeth. In new statements published today by ABC News, Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld says that West’s actions in these cases was “criminal.”

West "deliberately fabricated evidence and conclusions which were not supported by the evidence, the data or the rules of science but … because they were consistent with the prosecutor's theory,'' said Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal organization that examines questionable convictions and has won the exoneration of more than 200 inmates.

"If you fabricate evidence in a capital murder case, where you know that if the person's convicted they are going to be executed — as far as I'm concerned that's the crime of attempted murder.''"He's a criminal," Neufeld said of West.

The two cases were investigated by the same Noxubee County, Mississippi detective and prosecuted by the same attorney, and the same medical examiner and forensic dentist appeared in each case.

This is the first time that Neufeld or his colleagues at the Innocence Project have ever called for the criminal prosecution of a scientist, Neufeld said.

"These are not cases of sloppy forensic science,'' Neufeld said on Monday. "This is intentional misconduct. It's fabricated evidence to send people to death row.''

ABC News also spoke to Noxubee County Forrest Allgood, who brought West into the case as a witness. Allgood prosecuted both Brewer and Brooks in the 1990s, and he fought Brewer’s exoneration for the last seven years.

Allgood said that during the trials of Brewer and Brooks in the early 1990s, West's reputation was intact.

"At the time he was sitting on top of the world,'' Allgood said. "He was lecturing in China. He was lecturing in England."

"Nobody wants to put the wrong guy in jail,'' Allgood concluded, though adding that he still believes that Brewer "had a hand'' in Jackson's abduction.

In fact, West had already been widely discrdited – and his membership in professional associations had been revoked – when Allgood called him to testify in Brewer’s trial.

There is also no evidence that Brewer “had a hand” in the kidnapping, rape or murder of the three-year-old victim; instead, there is solid, irrefutable scientific evidence that he was not involved in the crime at all. "

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com

BACK TO THE VIDEO! LAWYER JIM CRAIG'S EARLIER COLUMN ON DR. MICHAEL WEST - AND THE PERVERSION OF JUSTICE IN MISSISSIPPI; ANOTHER POWERFUL READ;

"I USED TO THINK I WAS JADED, BUT I COULD NEVER HAVE DREAMED THAT EVEN DRS. HAYNE AND WEST WOULD SO BOLDLY MANUFACTURE FALSE EVIDENCE -- AND RECORD IT ON VIDEO."

LAWYER JIM CRAIG: "JIM CRAIG'S WORLD";

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The earlier column appeared on "Jim Craig's World" on February 23, 2009, under the heading, "Quacks With Bite: Forensic Fabrications Exposed."

"While we're waiting for the verdict in United States v. Melton, please pause for a bit and consider another possible criminal violation of the civil rights of Mississippians," the column began;

"A little more than a year ago, Reason magazine's Radley Balko published his devastating expose of pathologist Stephen Hayne and forensic dentist Michael West, who practiced misanthropy as State experts in Mississippi criminal cases, (www.reason.com/hayne)," it continued;

"Then in Spring 2008, the exonerations of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks demonstrated the human cost of false forensic testimony -- two men sent to Parchman's death row for over a decade (although one was resentenced to life due to mental retardation). When they were finally released, District Attorney Ben Creekmore, appointed special prosecutor in the cases, apologized for the wrongful incarceration on behalf of the State.

Now Mr. Balko has dropped another bomb. In the attached article, he posts a video tape of an autopsy at which Dr. West is seen pressing a defendant's dental mold into the face of a young girl's corpse. Dr. Hayne is present. The link is to Balko's story; the video can be found there. DO NOT WATCH THE VIDEO IF YOU ARE LIKELY TO BE UPSET. http://www.reason.com/news/show/131527.html

Balko reports:

"Reason recently obtained shocking video from another Hayne and West collaboration that may shed light on the question. In 1993, the two conducted an examination on a 23-month-old girl named Haley Oliveaux of West Monroe, Louisiana, who had drowned in her bathtub. The video shows bite marks mysteriously appearing on the toddler's face during the time she was in the custody of Hayne and West. It then shows West repeatedly and methodically pressing and scraping a dental mold of a man's teeth on the dead girl's skin. Forensic scientists who have viewed the footage say the video reveals not only medical malpractice, but criminal evidence tampering."

I used to think I was jaded, but I could never have dreamed that even Drs. Hayne and West would so boldly manufacture false evidence -- and record it on video.

For those of you who may think Mayor Melton should be acquitted because he is fighting the drug trade and "the end justifies the means," this video shows why we have to hold Government accountable to follow the law.

For those of you who think that prisoners who claim to be "framed" are delusional or mendacious, this video will make you re-think that attitude.

And for those of you who are still for the death penalty, remember this: false expert testimony could have sent two innocent men to their death. In our name.

It's time to get damn furious about those who misuse the public trust, and to change the criminal justice system to ensure that the all-too-human tendency to cut corners, assume guilt, and rush to judgment is curtailed and controlled by the rule of law.

Memo to our next United States Attorney: In Illinois, they indicted detectives who manufactured evidence in homicide cases.
http://www.mcall.com/topic/chi-020103trial3,0,4080114.story?page=1&track=rss;

Sounds like a good idea for Mississippi."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;

MORE ON DR. MICHAEL WEST'S SHINY BLUE LIGHT - AND COMPARISON AS DENTAL EQUIVALENT OF DISCREDITED FOOTPRINT "EXPERT" LOUISE ROBBINS;

"THE PROBLEM WITH THE BLUE LIGHT, ACCORDING TO HIS SCIENTIFIC COUNTERPARTS, IS THAT WEST SEES THINGS UNDER IT THAT HE CANNOT DOCUMENT AND THAT NOBODY ELSE CAN SEE. WHILE THEY SAY THERE IS LEGITIMATE SCIENTIFIC BASIS FOR SUGGESTING THAT SUCH A LIGHT CAN ENHANCE FEATURES ON THE SURFACE OF SKIN THAT OTHERWISE WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO SEE, THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT SUCH A LIGHT CAN MAKE A MARK THAT IS INVISIBLE UNDER NATURAL LIGHT SUDDENLY APPEAR. NORMAL SKIN FLUORESCES UNDER A BLUE LIGHT; DAMAGED SKIN DOES NOT, THEY POINT OUT.

BUT THE BLUE LIGHT IS JUST PART OF THE PROBLEM HIS PEERS HAVE WITH WEST. EVEN WHEN HE WAS NOT USING SUCH A LIGHT, THEY SAY, WEST HAS CLAIMED TO SEE THINGS THAT HE HAS NOT BEEN ABLE TO DOCUMENT, FAILED TO FOLLOW GENERALLY ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC TECHNIQUES, AND TESTIFIED ABOUT HIS FINDINGS WITH AN UNHEARD OF DEGREE OF SCIENTIFIC CERTAINTY —“INDEED AND WITHOUT A DOUBT” IS HIS STANDARD OPERATING OPINION."

MARK HENSON: AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION JOURNAL;

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The Amercian Bar Association Journal's notes in an article entitled "Out of the Blue" published in February, 1996, that: "Even after the Supreme Court tried to rein in expert witnesses willing to testify at the drop of a theory, embattled dentist Michael West and his shininng light prove that 'science' can be stranger than fiction."

"If Michael H. West had stuck to what he presumably does best, he might not today be regarded by much of the scientific community as the dental equivalent of now discredited footprint expert Louise Robbins," the article by Mark Hansen begins;

"Robbins, who died in 1987, was a college anthropology professor whose chief claim to fame was her apparent ability to match a footprint on any surface to the person who made it," it continues.

"The trouble with Robbins, who appeared as an expert witness in more than 20 criminal cases in 11 states and Canada during a 10-year period, is that her claims have since been thoroughly debunked.

And the trouble with West, a 43-year-old forensic dentist from Hattiesburg, Miss., who has made a name for himself in legal circles since the mid-1980s for his seeming ability to match bite marks with the teeth that made them, is that he reminds so many people of Robbins.

Robbins’ claims were hotly contested from the moment she first stepped foot in a courtroom. Yet she continued to testify with virtual impunity until failing health forced her off the witness stand.

West’s self-proclaimed forensic abilities also have long been questioned by many of his peers. Indeed, he resigned from one professional association in 1994 after it had taken steps to have him expelled. He was suspended for a year from another professional association, to which he was automatically reinstated this past May.

Like Robbins, though, such criticism appears to have had little or no effect on West’s legal career, which he says is going strong.

“I’m as active now as I’ve ever been,” he says.

It took years to undo the damage done by Robbins, whose testimony helped put more than a dozen people behind bars, including an Ohio man who spent six years on death row before his conviction was overturned on appeal in 1990.

The consequences of West’s testimony are just now starting to be sorted out. And compared to his track record, Robbins was small potatoes.

By his own estimate, West has appeared as an expert about 55 times in nine states over the past dozen or so years, at least a third to a half of which were capital murder cases. He says he lost his first bite mark case, in 1983, but that he has not lost one at trial since (excluding any convictions reversed on appeal).

But West’s proclaimed expertise is not limited to bite marks. In fact, he has created a comfy niche, mostly as a prosecution expert, matching not only bite marks with teeth, but also wounds with weap-ons, shoes with footprints and fingernails with scratches, even spills with stains.

West’s testimony has helped put doz-ens of defendants in prison, some for life, and at least two on death row, where they remain today.

West is perhaps best known for his controversial use of a special blue light to study wound patterns on a body. With a pair of yellow-lensed goggles and a long-wave ultraviolet light, West claims he can see things that are otherwise invisible to the unaided eye.

Criminologists have long used such a blue light to look for trace evidence at the scene of a crime. A few other forensic dentists have experimented with the use of such a light for research purposes. But West is the only one presenting himself as an expert on the subject in court.

The problem with the blue light, according to his scientific counterparts, is that West sees things under it that he cannot document and that nobody else can see. While they say there is legitimate scientific basis for suggesting that such a light can enhance features on the surface of skin that otherwise would be difficult to see, there is no evidence that such a light can make a mark that is invisible under natural light suddenly appear. Normal skin fluoresces under a blue light; damaged skin does not, they point out.

But the blue light is just part of the problem his peers have with West. Even when he was not using such a light, they say, West has claimed to see things that he has not been able to document, failed to follow generally accepted scientific techniques, and testified about his findings with an unheard of degree of scientific certainty —“indeed and without a doubt” is his standard operating opinion.

The controversy over West’s self-proclaimed expertise illustrates, at a state level, the types of issues that courts confront in deciding who qualifies as an expert witness and what constitutes scientific evidence.

The U.S. Supreme Court set the standard in 1993 for federal trials when it held that such evidence must be validated scientifically. Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 113 S. Ct. 2786. It was no longer sufficient for evidence to be based merely on generally accepted scientific principles, which had been the federal standard for 70 years and is still the rule in some states. Daubert was supposed to help keep unproven science out of the courtroom.

Despite all the questions that have been raised about his work, though, West remains in demand as an expert. This past March he testified in separate cases against two Mississippi capital murder defendants who subsequently were convicted and sentenced to death: one for the murder of a 3-year-old girl; the other for the murder of three people. West currently has other cases pending.

West is not alone either, according to his peers, who say there are more than a few others out there like him: self-proclaimed experts whose so-called expertise is dubious at best, but who regard themselves as being equal to any task.

“He is clearly a sore on the body of forensic science,” says James Starrs, a professor of law and forensic science at George Washington University and publisher of Scientific Sleuthing Review, an industry newsletter. “He is forever going beyond what other scientists are willing or able to say.”

Robert Kirschner, former deputy chief medical examiner for Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, says what West purports to do is closer to voodoo or alchemy than science.

“History is full of people who claimed they could see things, from ghosts to UFOs,” Kirschner says. “But claiming it and proving it are two different things.” Kirschner, who has squared off against West in court on two occasions, says the forensic dentist’s work violates every known rule of scientific inquiry and investigation. Nor has West ever been able to document anything he claims to have done, Kirschner adds.

“The results shouldn’t be admitted in any court,” he says.

But they have been, with troubling regularity, according to Kirsch-ner and other experts, who say some prosecutors are too willing to turn to somebody like West when they lack the evidence they believe they need to tie a suspect to a crime.

Armstrong Walters, a Columbus, Miss., lawyer who has twice crossed paths with West in court, says no district attorney in the Deep South stands a chance of re-election if a murder occurs in his or her jurisdiction and somebody does not wind up in prison for it. “West confirms whatever suspicions the police have,” he adds.

West, however, remains defiant, saying he is not doing anything that is not being done by his peers—who, he notes, just happen to be his competitors.

“These personal attacks on me are motivat- ed by professional jealousy.”

In defending his own objectivity, West says he does not see himself as either a prosecution or a defense expert, but as an “expert for the truth.” All told, he says, he has eliminated many more people as suspects than he has implicated.

West is dedicated, if nothing else. He once had himself bitten on the arm, had the bite mark biopsied and then photographed the wound under different lights over a period of several months, all in the name of science.

He also justifies his choice of terminology, describing the “indeed and without a doubt” opinions he favors as being synonymous with the dictionary definition of certainty and less confusing to a jury than the “reasonable degree of medical/dental certainty” language preferred by his peers.

And West, who still enjoys the support of some prosecutors, shows no signs of backing down. In a rambling, three-hour telephone interview, he at times sounded bowed, but unbroken. Time and science, he insists, will someday prove him right. “I keep losing in committee and in the media,” he says. “But I keep winning in court, where it counts.”

Asked about the consequences of constantly having to defend himself, he says it has left him “em- barrassed, ashamed, financially strapped, humiliated, paranoid and extremely anxious,” but otherwise has had “no effect whatsoever.”

But he is not taking it lying down. West is suing the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, from which he resigned in 1994, after its ethics committee recommended that he be expelled for allegedly failing to meet professional standards of research, misrepresenting data to support a general acceptance of his techniques, and offering opinions that exceed a reasonable degree of scientific certainty.

His suit, filed last year in U.S. District Court at Hattiesburg, Miss., contends, among other things, that the academy’s attempt to expel him violated his due process rights and caused him emotional distress. (As of mid-December, a motion by the academy for summary judgment was pending.)

West also was suspended two years ago from the American Board of Forensic Odontology. The board found that West had misrepresent-ed evidence and testified outside his field of ex- pertise. But he has not sued that organization, of which he is once again a member in good standing.

For a dentist, though, West seems to know a lot about feet. In 1990, for instance, he identified a footprint on a murdered girl’s face in Jefferson Parish, La., outside of New Orleans, as having been made by an athletic shoe found in the apartment of a neighbor.

That neighbor, Thomas Abadie, facing a possible death sentence, eventually entered a plea to man-slaughter and was sentenced to 31 years in prison.

A year later, in the same parish, West matched a bruise on a murdered boy’s stomach to a hiking boot belonging to the boy’s mother, Patricia Van Winkle.

Although Van Winkle was convicted of manslaughter and received a 21-year sentence, her conviction was overturned on other grounds this past June by the Louisiana Supreme Court. State v. Van Winkle, 658 So.2d 198.

Robert Toale, the lawyer who represented both Abadie and Van Winkle, says there is no end to West’s arrogance. Toale says he once asked West on cross-examination about his margin of error. He says he will never forget the response.

“Something less than my savior, Jesus Christ,” he quoted West as saying.

But West’s apparent expertise goes beyond teeth or feet. In 1990, in the Gulf Coast city of Pasca-goula, Miss., he matched the fingernails of a murder victim, which he had removed and mounted on sticks, to scratches on the forearms of the defendant, Mark Oppie. Op-pie, who also was looking at a possible death sentence, agreed to a manslaughter plea that left him eligible for parole in about six years.

And, in what still may be the most unusual manifestation of his supposed forensic abilities, West showed up in Xenia, Ohio, near Dayton, in 1993, where, presented as a burn pattern specialist by prosecutors, he testified at the trial of a 17-year-old youth charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of his disabled 6-year-old sister, who had been chemically burned by bleach.

The defendant, who maintained that his sister had spilled bleach on herself, was acquitted, despite testimony by West that the bleach had been poured deliberately on the girl.

“How he got qualified as an expert on bleach spills is between him and the judge,” says defense lawyer, John Rion, who sarcastically calls West “the world’s expert on everything. I thought [his testimony] was preposterous.”

But West says none of it is as preposterous as it may seem.

Teeth and feet are no different from fingernails, pliers, tire irons, bleach or, for that matter, anything else that can be used as a weapon, he says. And just like guns and knives, each has certain class and individual characteristics that can be identified and compared to the wound pattern it is believed to have made to determine whether they match, he adds.

Questions about West’s forensic abilities first were raised in connection with an investigation into the 1990 stabbing deaths of three elderly people near Meridian, Miss., in the central part of the state. Nearly two weeks after the killings, West was called in to examine a butcher knife believed to have been used in the crime, as well as the hands of the chief suspect, Larry Maxwell.

West not only identified the knife as the murder weapon, but in his first application of the blue light claimed he could see an impression made by the exposed rivets in the handle of the knife on Maxwell’s palm. West says he took photos of this phenomenon, which he then took the liberty of naming after himself, but accidentally overexposed the film, which reduced him to drawing on photocopies of the defendant’s palm what he says he saw.

Maxwell, who spent more than two years in jail awaiting trial, was freed in 1992 after a judge ruled that West’s blue light testimony was inadmissible.

“It may well be that Dr. West is a pioneer in the field of alternative light imaging for the purpose of detecting trace wound patterns on the human skin, and it may well be that the future will prove that his techniques are sound evidentiary tools that result in the presentation of inherently reliable expert opinions. But at this time I am not so convinced,” Kemper County, Miss., Circuit Judge Larry Roberts wrote.

Maxwell, who also alleges he was beaten by police, is suing West, along with several local law enforcement officials, in U.S. District Court at Jackson, Miss., on charges of false arrest and use of unreasonable force. Maxwell, whose suit is set for trial in April, is seeking dam-ages of $10 million.

“Essentially, [West’s testimony] was the only evidence they had,” says Jackson lawyer Karla Pierce, who represents Max-well in the civil suit. West, for his part, stands by his testimony. “It was a perfect match,” he says of the knife and the pattern he says he observed on Max-well’s hand.

If the Maxwell case didn’t damage West’s credibility, word of what happened to Johnny Bourn might have destroyed it for good. In 1992, West positively identified a bite mark on an elderly rape and robbery victim in Jackson County, Miss., which includes Pascagoula, as having been made by Bourn.

Unfortunately for West, hair and fingerprint evidence from the crime scene did not match the defendant’s. And a DNA analysis of the assailant’s skin, obtained from fingernail scrapings of the victim, positively excluded Bourn.

The charges were dropped, but by then Bourn had spent about 11⁄2 years in jail awaiting trial.

“I know [Bourn] bit that woman,” West says today, first suggesting that the DNA results were faulty and then spec-ulating on the possibility of multiple assailants. “The question [presented by the DNA] is whether he raped her. He may have had an accomplice.”

That kind of controversy has dogged West throughout his career. In 1990, for example, his testimony helped seal the fate of Henry Lee Harrison, a Jackson County man convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl.

West testified that he had identified more than 41 bite marks covering the victim’s body, all of which he said had been inflicted by Harrison, some while the girl was alive, some after she was dead.

“He had very unique teeth,” West says of the defendant. “And they all showed up in the wound pattern on the victim’s body.”

However, two other experts who since have examined the evidence scoff at West’s findings. One says the marks on the girl’s body cannot be identified. The other says they probably were ant bites.

“To say these are human bite marks is ludicrous,” says Richard Souviron, a forensic dentist from Miami who is widely regarded as one of the nation’s foremost bite mark experts. Souviron is perhaps best known as the expert who matched serial killer Ted Bundy’s teeth to bite marks on one of his victims. He also was chair of the ethics committee of the forensic dentists board, which recommended that West be suspended.

“Anytime you take a body and dump it in a swamp, you’re going to have insect activity. Anybody could you tell you that,” he says.

West replies that “I’m not saying there weren’t ants on the girl. But they’re not going to bite a pattern into the victim’s body that exactly matches the defendant’s teeth.”

Harrison’s conviction and sentence were overturned in 1994 by the Mississippi Supreme Court, but not because of West. The court ordered Harrison retried because it found that the state failed to disclose evidence supporting the rape charge and the judge refused to authorize funds to allow the defense to hire an expert to rebut it. Harrison v. State, 635 So.2d 894.

Two years ago, West’s testimony also was instrumental in helping convict Anthony Keko for the 1991 murder of his estranged wife, Louise, in Plaquemines Parish, La., near New Orleans.

West, who had Louise Keko’s body exhumed more than a year after her death, identified what he said was a bite mark on her shoulder as having been made by her estranged husband. West had the bite mark removed for safekeeping, but later said it had been erased after it was accidentally placed in embalming fluid.

Defense experts, on the other hand, said they could not be sure the mark was even a bite, let alone identify the person who might have made it.

Souviron, one of the defense’s experts, says the mark appears to be a post-mortem artifact, or an unexplained injury that occurred at some point after the victim’s death. “It could have been anything, really.”

Yet the jury chose to believe West, whose testimony provided the only direct evidence linking Keko to the crime, according to his lawyer, Eddie Castaing. After four hours of deliberation, Keko was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

In December 1994, however, the trial judge, voicing doubts about West’s forensic abilities in light of the previously undisclosed disciplinary proceedings against him, reversed Keko’s conviction and ordered a new trial.

Keko is free on bond while he awaits a new trial, which was tentatively set to begin early this year. But his lawyer is trying to prevent West from testifying again, because without him prosecutors concede they do not have much of a case.

“It’s either him or nothing,” says Plaquemines Parish assistant district attorney Charles Ballay, the prosecutor.

Ballay says he thinks too much importance has been placed on West’s role in the case. West only spent about a day on the witness stand in a trial that lasted 23 days, he says. And the circumstantial evidence against Keko, in and of itself, was very persuasive, he adds.

“It wasn’t like the jury was being asked to believe West and only West,” he says. “There was a lot of other evidence that pointed to Keko being the murderer.”

That evidence alone, though, probably is not strong enough to convict, Ballay concedes. West’s tes-timony is the only evidence, he says, placing Keko at the crime scene, which may explain why he and other prosecutors still vouch for West.

Ballay says there is nothing new or mysterious about West’s techniques. The only thing that is new, he says, is that these techniques are now being applied to the field of forensic science for the first time.

James Maxwell, the Jefferson Parish, La., assistant district attorney who prosecuted Abadie and Van Winkle, says flat-ly that he thinks West is ahead of his time.

“I’m quite confident in the guy,” he says. “I have a lot of faith in him. And I think he makes one heck of a witness.”

Maxwell says he could not say whether he would use West again, only that he has not had another opportunity to do so.

West, though, is still at it. This past March, while he remained under suspension from the board of forensic dentists, in separate trials only days apart, West helped Mississippi pros-ecutors obtain first-degree murder convictions against two men who are now on death row.

One of them is Kennedy Brewer of Brooksville, Miss., who was sentenced to die for the 1992 rape and murder of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter.

West identified 19 bite marks on the girl’s body that he said had been made by Brewer, all of which he claimed to have matched to Brew-er’s upper teeth. The defense, once again, called on Souviron, who said the marks appeared to have been made by insects.

But even if they were not insect bites, Souviron says, the marks could not have been made the way West had claimed. It would be impossible, Souviron says, to bite someone that many times without leaving a single bite mark from the lower teeth.

“You could not make bites the way [West] says these bites were made,” Souviron notes. “It’s crazy.”

Crazy or not, the jury believed it, a result which troubles Brewer’s defense lawyer, Thomas Kesler, more than any other case he has tried in 16 years of practice.

Kesler, of Columbus, Miss., is no bleeding heart: He has represented two other defendants in capital murder cases; as a prosecutor, he once tried a murder case in which the defendant received the death penalty. And he concedes that a reasonable person might look at the evidence against Brewer and conclude that he was guilty.

But Kesler still has his doubts. Without West’s testimony, he says, the case against Brewer was not only circumstantial but paper-thin. And the defendant, who had refused to even consider a plea bargain, has always maintained his innocence, Kesler adds. “It’s the kind of case that gives a lawyer heartburn.”

John Kenney, chief forensic odontologist for the Cook County, Ill., medical examiner’s office, and the current president of the board of forensic odontology, says that even though West is back in the good graces of the organization, he is not home-free. From now on, every time West goes into court, Kenney says, he will have to acknowledge having once been suspended by his peers.

“As forensic scientists, the only thing we have is our reputation,” he says. “This blemish on his record is something he’ll have to contend with for the rest of his professional life.”

But John Holdridge, a New Orleans lawyer whose complaints about West prompted the two professional groups to take disciplinary action against him, says the fact that West is still testifying at all shows that some courts, nearly three years after Daubert, remain unwilling or unable to distinguish science from science fiction.

“I think it shows that judges aren’t willing to exercise the discretion that’s been given them in any meaningful way,” Holdridge says. “They just leave it up to the jury, which is obviously in no position to make these kinds of decisions.”

The forensic science community has done its job with respect to West, he says. Now it is up to the courts to do theirs."

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com

DR. MICHAEL WEST'S BLUE LIGHT: THE UNRAVELLING OF AN EXPERT WITNESS;

"TEN DAYS AFTER THREE ELDERLY WOMEN WERE STABBED TO DEATH NEAR MERIDIAN, MISSISSIPPI, THE POLICE ARRESTED A SUSPECT NAMED LARRY MAXWELL. WITH NO PHYSICAL EVIDENCE LINKING MAXWELL TO THE KILLINGS, THE POLICE CALLED ON DR. WEST TO DETERMINE, THROUGH HIS BLUE LIGHT TECHNIQUE, IF MAXWELL HELD THE MURDER WEAPON. ACCORDING TO THE DENTIST, HIS ULTRAVIOLET EXAMINATION OF MAXWELL'S RIGHT HAND REVEALED PRESSURE POINT IMPRESSIONS LEFT BY THE RIVETS IN THE HANDLE OF THE BUTCHER KNIFE. MAXWELL SAT IN JAIL TWO YEARS AWAITING TRIAL BEFORE A JUDGE ENDED HIS NIGHTMARE BY DECLARING THE KNIFE-HANDLE IMPRESSION IDENTIFICATION UNSCIENTIFIC AND INADMISSIBLE;"

JIM FISHER: FORENSICS UNDER FIRE;

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A previous post set out Mississippi lawyer Jim Craig's perceptive analysis of Dr. Michael West's defence against allegations that he tampered with evidence.

I was particularly intrigued by Mr. Craig's comment that, "In the world where Michael West's blue light shines, anything is possible."

Michael West's blue light?

Needing to know more, I dispatched my 1001 highly trained researchers to the books and they came up with a reference to Michael West's blue light, in a work called "Forensics under fire" by Jim Fisher, which is published by Rutgers University Press and bears the subtitle: Are Bad Science and Dueling Experts Corrupting Criminal Justice?
About the Author:

Jim Fisher is described as having worked as a special agent, conducting criminal investigations for the FBI from 1966 to 1972. He later taught criminal investigation, criminal law, and forensic science at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.

Fisher describes West's hocus-pocus techniques in a section of his book called, " Larry Maxwell and the Incriminating Blue Light."

"Dr. West's testimony in a 1990 triple murder case that had nothing to do with forensic ontology marked the beginning of the slow unravelling of his credibility as an expert witness," the section begins;

"Ten days after three elderly women were stabbed to death near Meridian, Mississippi, the police arrested a suspect named Larry Maxwell," the section continues;

"With no physical evidence linking Maxwell to the killings, the police called on Dr. West to determine, through his blue light technique, if Maxwell held the murder weapon. According to the dentist, his ultraviolet examination of Maxwell's right hand revealed pressure point impressions left by the rivets in the handle of the butcher knife. Maxwell sat in jail two years awaiting trial before a judge ended his nightmare by declaring the knife-handle impression identification unscientific and inadmissible;

Outraged by what he considered pure courtroom hokum, Maxwell's attorney filed a complaint against Dr. West with the International Association of Identification, the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and the American Board of Forensic Odontology. In 1993, facing an ethics investigation, Dr. West resigned from the International Association of Identification. A year later heleft the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Suspended for a year by the American Board of Forensic Odontology, Dr. West accused his colleaugues of professional jealousy. According to Michael West, the other forensicodontologists resented him for hogging all the glory;"

Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;