More than 15 years after Gerard Richardson was convicted for the murder of Monica Reyes based solely on bite mark analysis, a DNA test revealed that Richardson’s DNA was completely absent. He is now hoping for exoneration so as to not fulfill the remainder of his 30-year sentence. Cases like this suggest that perhaps forensic dentistry isn’t really helping to take those proverbial bites of out crime after all.
The Innocence Project of New York (IP), a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing, has helped to exonerate 17 people in similar cases as Richardson. The amount of incidences that seemingly tie wrongful conviction to bite mark analysis is enough for the IP to label it as junk science. And they aren’t alone in their skepticism: According to the original story at The Verge, in a report four years ago the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) stated “the interpretation of forensic evidence [such as bite mark analysis] is not always based on scientific studies to determine its validity. This is a serious problem.”
Of course there is always the other side of the story. Dr. Gregory Golden, president of the American Board of Forensic Odontology and seasoned courtroom expert, told The Verge that bite mark analysis is in fact reliable, and has led to many convictions – one of them being serial killer Ted Bundy.
But, he admits, part of the problem is there isn’t enough scientific research to back claims from forensic odontoligists in court. “It’s almost impossible to find voluntary subjects offering themselves to be bitten severely enough to be wounded” for research purposes, he pointed out.
Even so, the courts largely uphold bite mark analysis as a worthy forensic tool. Golden says 98 percent of the time forensic odontologists’ analysis has been accurate. That’s a good enough number for some, but not for the IP.
“There’s a universe of people in prison who were put there by bite mark evidence,” IP’s director of strategic litigation, Chris Fabricant, says. “This is a flawed discipline, and it’s done immeasurable harm to untold numbers of wrongfully convicted people as well as the justice system itself.”
Read the original article at The Verge here.