At least 24 men convicted or charged with murder or rape
based on bite marks on the flesh of victims have been exonerated since 2000,
many after spending more than a decade in prison. Now a judge's ruling later
this month in New York could help end the practice for good.
A small, mostly ungoverned group of dentists carry out bite
mark analysis, and their findings are often key evidence in prosecutions, even
though there is no scientific proof that teeth can be matched definitively to a
bite into human skin.
DNA has outstripped the usefulness of bite mark analysis in
many cases: The FBI doesn't use it and the American Dental Association does not
recognize it.
"Bite mark evidence is the poster child of unreliable
forensic science," said Chris Fabricant, director of strategic litigation
at the New York-based Innocence Project, which helps wrongfully convicted
inmates win freedom through DNA testing.
Supporters of the method, which involves comparing the teeth
of possible suspects to bite mark patterns on victims, argue it has helped
convict child murderers and other notorious criminals, including serial killer
Ted Bundy. They say problems that have arisen are not about the method, but
about the qualifications of those testifying, who can earn as much as $5,000 a
case.
"The problem lies in the analyst or the bias,"
said Dr. Frank Wright, a forensic dentist in Cincinnati. "So if the
analyst is ... not properly trained or introduces bias into their exam, sure,
it's going to be polluted, just like any other scientific investigation. It
doesn't mean bite mark evidence is bad."
The Associated Press reviewed decades of court records,
archives, news reports and filings by the Innocence Project in order to compile
the most comprehensive count to date of those exonerated after being convicted
or charged based on bite mark evidence. Two dozen forensic scientists and other
experts were interviewed, including some who had never before spoken to a
reporter about their work.
The AP analysis found that at least two dozen men had been
exonerated since 2000, mostly as a result of DNA testing. Many had spent years
in prison, including on death row, and one man was behind bars for more than 23
years. The count included at least six men arrested on bite mark evidence who
were freed as they awaited trial.
Two court cases this month are helping to bring the debate
over the issue to a head. One involves a 63-year-old California man who is
serving a life term for killing his wife, even though the forensic dentist who
testified against him has reversed his opinion.
In the second, a New York City judge overseeing a murder
case is expected to decide whether bite mark analysis can be admitted as
evidence, a ruling critics say could kick it out of courtrooms for good.
Some notable cases of faulty bite mark analysis include:
• Two men convicted of raping and killing two 3-year-old
girls in separate Mississippi crimes in 1992 and 1995. Marks on their bodies
were later determined to have come from crawfish and insects.
• A New Mexico man imprisoned in the 1989 rape and murder of
his stepdaughter, who was found with a possible bite mark on her neck and sperm
on her body. It was later determined that the stepfather had a medical
condition that prevented him from producing sperm.
• Ray Krone, the so-called "Snaggletooth Killer,"
who was convicted in 1992 and again in 1996 after winning a new trial in the
murder of a Phoenix bartender found naked and stabbed in the men's restroom of
the bar where she worked. Krone spent 10 years in prison, three on death row.
Raymond Rawson, a Las Vegas forensic dentist, testified at
both trials that bite marks on the bartender could only have come from Krone,
evidence that proved critical in convicting him. At his second trial, three top
forensic dentists testified for the defense that Krone couldn't have made the
bite mark, but the jury didn't give their findings much weight and again found
him guilty.
In 2002, DNA testing matched a different man, and Krone was
released.
Rawson, like a handful of other forensic dentists implicated
in faulty testimony connected to high-profile exonerations, remains on the
American Board of Forensic Odontology, the only entity that certifies and
oversees bite mark analysts. Now retired, he didn't return messages left at a
number listed for him in Las Vegas.
Rawson has never publicly acknowledged making a mistake, nor
has he apologized to Krone, who described sitting helplessly in court listening
to the dentist identify him as the killer.
"You're dumbfounded," Krone said in a telephone
interview from his home in Newport, Tenn. "There's one person that knows
for sure and that was me. And he's so pompously, so arrogantly and so
confidently stating that, beyond a shadow of doubt, he's positive it was my
teeth. It was so ridiculous."
The history of bite mark analysis began in 1954 with a piece
of cheese in small-town Texas. A dentist testified that a bite mark in the
cheese, left behind in a grocery store that had been robbed, matched the teeth
of a drunken man found with 13 stolen silver dollars. The man was convicted.
The first court case involving a bite mark on a person
didn't come until two decades later, in 1974, also in Texas. Two dentists
testified that a man's teeth matched a bite mark on a murder victim. Although
the defense attorney fought the admissibility of the evidence, a court ruled
that it should be allowed because it had been used in 1954.
Bite mark analysis hit the big time at Bundy's 1979 Florida
trial.
On the night Bundy went on a killing spree that left two
young women dead and three others seriously wounded, he savagely bit one of the
murder victims, Lisa Levy. A Florida forensic dentist, Dr. Richard Souviron,
testified at Bundy's murder trial that his unusual, mangled teeth were a match. Bundy was found guilty and executed. The bite marks were
considered the key piece of physical evidence against him.
That nationally televised case and dozens more in the 1980s
and 1990s made bite mark evidence look like infallible, cutting-edge science,
and courtrooms accepted it with little debate.
Then came DNA testing. Beginning in the early 2000s, new
evidence set free men serving prison time or awaiting the death penalty largely
because of bite mark testimony that later proved faulty.
At the core of critics' arguments is that science hasn't
shown it's possible to match a bite mark to a single person's teeth or even
that human skin can accurately record a bite mark.
Fabricant, of the Innocence Project, said what's most
troubling about bite mark evidence is how powerful it can be for jurors.
"It's very inflammatory," he said. "What
could be more grotesque than biting someone amid a murder or a rape hard enough
to leave an injury? It's highly prejudicial, and its probative value is completely
unknown."
Fabricant and other defense attorneys are fighting to get
bite mark analysis thrown out of courtrooms, most recently focusing their efforts
on the New York City case.
It involves the death of 33-year-old Kristine Yitref, whose
beaten and strangled body was found wrapped in garbage bags under a bed in a
hotel near Times Square in 2007. A forensic dentist concluded a mark on her
body matched the teeth of Clarence Brian Dean, a 41-year-old fugitive sex
offender from Alabama, who is awaiting trial on a murder charge.
Dean told police he killed Yitref in self-defense, saying
she and another man attacked him in a robbery attempt after he agreed to pay
her for sex; no other man was found.
Dean's defense attorneys have challenged the prosecution's
effort to admit the bite mark evidence, and a judge is expected to issue a
ruling as early as mid-June — a pivotal step critics hope could eventually help
lead to a ban on such evidence.
A dayslong hearing last year over the scientific validity of
bite marks went to the heart of the debate.
"The issue is not that bite mark analysis is invalid,
but that bite mark examiners are not properly vetted," Dr. David Senn, of
San Antonio, testified at the hearing.
Another case gaining attention is that of William Joseph
Richards, convicted in 1997 of killing his wife, Pam, in San Bernardino,
Calif., and sentenced to life in prison.
Pam Richards had been strangled and beaten with rocks, her
skull crushed by a cinder block, and her body left lying in the dirt in front
of their home, naked from the waist down.
Dr. Norman Sperber, a well-respected forensic dentist,
testified that a crescent-shaped wound on her body corresponded with an
extremely rare abnormality in William Richards' teeth.
But at a 2009 hearing seeking Richards' freedom, Sperber
recanted his testimony, saying that it was scientifically inaccurate, that he
no longer was sure the wound was a bite mark, and that even if it was, Richards
could not have made it.
Shortly after that, a judge tossed out Richards' conviction
and declared him innocent. The prosecution appealed and the case went all the
way to the California Supreme Court, which ruled in December that Richards had
failed to prove his innocence, even though the bite mark evidence had been
discredited. In a 4-3 decision, the court said forensic evidence, even if later
recanted, can be deemed false only in very narrow circumstances and Richards
did not meet that high bar.
Since April 27, Richards' attorneys have been on what they
dubbed a two-month "innocence march" from San Diego to the state
capital, Sacramento, to deliver a request for clemency to Gov. Jerry Brown and
raise awareness about wrongful convictions. They are expected to arrive later
this month.
The American Board of Forensic Odontology recently got a
request from Richards' attorneys, who are affiliated with the Innocence
Project, for a written opinion on the shoddy bite mark evidence used against
him. The board declined.
Only about 100 forensic dentists are certified by the
odontology board, and just a fraction are actively analyzing and comparing bite
marks. Certification requires no proficiency tests. The board requires a
dentist to have been the lead investigator and to have testified in one current
bite mark case and to analyze six past cases on file — a system criticized by
defense attorneys because it requires testimony before certification.
Testifying can earn a forensic dentist $1,500 to $5,000 per
case, though most testify in only a few a year. The consequences for being
wrong are almost nonexistent. Many lawsuits against forensic dentists employed
by counties and medical examiner's offices have been thrown out because as
government officials, they're largely immune from liability.
Only one member of the American Board of Forensic Odontology
has ever been suspended, none has ever been decertified, and some dentists
still on the board have been involved in some of the most high-profile and
egregious exonerations on record.
Even Dr. Michael West, whose testimony is considered pivotal
in the wrongful convictions or imprisonment of at least four men, was not
thrown off the board. West was suspended and ended up stepping down.
Among his cases were the separate rapes and murders of the
two 3-year-old girls in Mississippi, where West testified that two men later
exonerated by DNA evidence were responsible for what he said were bite marks on
their bodies. The marks later turned out to be from crawfish and insects, and a
different man's DNA matched both cases.
West now says DNA has made bite mark analysis almost
obsolete.
"People love to have a black-and-white, and it's not
black and white," said West, of Hattiesburg, Miss., where he has a dental
practice but no longer works on bite mark cases. "I thought it was
extremely accurate, but other cases have proven it's not."
Levon Brooks, convicted of killing one of the girls, spent
16 years in prison. The other, Kennedy Brewer, was behind bars for 13 years,
many of them on death row.
West defended his testimony, saying he never testified that
Brooks and Brewer were the killers, only that they bit the children, and that
he's not responsible for juries who found them guilty.
Other dentists involved in exonerations have been allowed to
remain on the board as long as they don't handle more bite mark cases, said
Wright, the Cincinnati forensic dentist.
"The ABFO has had some internal issues as far as not
really policing our own," he said.
Wright and other forensic dentists have been working to
develop guidelines to help avert problems of the past while retaining bite mark
analysis in the courtroom.
Their efforts include a flow chart to help forensic dentists
determine whether bite mark analysis is even appropriate for a given case.
Wright also is working on developing a proficiency test that would be required
for recertification every five years.
An internal debate over the future of the practice was laid
bare at a conference in Washington in February, when scores of dentists — many
specializing in bite mark analysis — attended days of lectures and panel
discussions. The field's harshest critics also were there, leading to heated
discussions about the method's limitations and strengths.
Dr. Gregory Golden, a forensic dentist and president of the
odontology board, acknowledged that flawed testimony has led to the
"ruination of several innocent people's lives" but said the field was
entering a "new era" of accountability.
Souviron, who testified against Bundy in 1979 and is one of
the founding fathers of bite mark analysis in the U.S., argued there's a
"real need for bite marks in our criminal justice system."
In an interview with the AP, Souviron compared the testimony
of well-trained bite mark analysts to medical examiners testifying about a
suspected cause of death.
"If someone's got an unusual set of teeth, like the
Bundy case, from the standpoint of throwing it out of court, that's
ridiculous," he said. "Every science that I know of has bad
individuals. Our science isn't bad. It's the individuals who are the
problem."
Many forensic dentists have helped the Innocence Project win
exonerations in bite mark cases gone wrong by re-examining evidence and
testifying for the wrongfully convicted.
But a once-cooperative relationship has turned adversarial
ever since the Innocence Project began trying to get bite mark evidence thrown
entirely out of courtrooms, while at the same time using it to help win
exonerations.
"They turn a blind eye to the good side of bite mark
analysis," Golden told the AP.
One example is a case Wright worked on in 1998. He analyzed
the bite marks of the only three people who were in an Ohio home when
17-day-old Legacy Fawcett was found dead in her crib. Of the three, two sets of
teeth could not have made the bite marks, Wright testified; only the teeth of
the mother's boyfriend could have. The boyfriend was found guilty of
involuntary manslaughter and served eight years in prison.
Without the bite mark, Wright said, the wrong person might
have been convicted or the man responsible could have gone free, or both.
"Bite mark evidence can be too important not to be
useful," Wright said. "You can't just throw it away."
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