Dentist hired as an expert witness now doubts science of bite-analysis.

 Hattiesburg man testified as expert in about 80 trials.

Since the 1980s, Hattiesburg dentist Michael West has raised his right hand and sworn dozens of time that bite marks on victims matched suspects.

He compared these bite marks to fingerprints, describing their unique characteristics to jurors. Most suspects he testified against went off to prison.

Now West rejects the very science he relied on to help put so many behind bars.

"I no longer believe in bite-mark analysis," he said in a 2011 deposition obtained by The Clarion-Ledger. "I don't think it should be used in court. I think you should use DNA. Throw bite marks out."
 
Two of those convicted in a 2001 aggravated assault case in which West testified, Leigh Stubbs and Tami Vance, are now receiving a new trial. They are both out on bond and will be arraigned today in Brookhaven.

Vance's lawyer, Merrida Coxwell of Jackson, said he believes West's testimony could affect any case in which the dentist has testified. "If I was a person in prison, I would demand a review," Coxwell said.

Asked about his testimony, West told The Clarion-Ledger his cases have been reviewed before, and he is happy to have them reviewed again.

He doesn't see his testimony as a reversal, he said. "If they (defense lawyers) wish to debate it in court, so be it."

As for bite-mark analysis, he is leaving that to others, he said. "The science is not as exact as I had hoped."

At one point, the science of identifying bite marks was cutting edge, he said. "DNA has made it fairly obsolete."

West has estimated he's worked on 16,000 cases, and he's put the number of trials he's testified at across the U.S. as an expert at 81.

According to his resume, courts have recognized him as an expert in bite marks, child abuse, wound pattern analysis, crime scene reconstruction and ultraviolet photography.

Over the decades, his testimony has proved effective. Of the 38 Mississippi criminal trials in which The Clarion-Ledger could find a record of West's testimony, 31 ended in convictions.
"The attorney general has recognized that bite mark evidence can be unreliable - and last fall he committed himself to investigating cases of innocence in which Dr. West testified," said Valena Beety, an attorney for the Mississippi Innocence Project representing Stubbs. "Yet, a year later, his office is seeking to re-try two women wrongly convicted in large part due to the testimony of Dr. West in 2001.

Tucker Carrington, director of the Mississippi Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi School of Law, which investigated the case, said Hood's decision to reprosecute "is disappointing - both for my client and for the state's criminal justice system overall."
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/article/20120806/NEWS11/208060307/Dentist-now-doubts-science-bite-analysis?nclick_check=1

Bite Mark Analysis: The biggest fail of all failed evidence.

Among failed forensic methods, virtually no type of evidence that has a worse record than bite mark analysis.

In my book Failed Evidence (NYU Press, Sept. 12), I say that courts must simply stop accepting bite mark analysis.  It has no scientific basis whatever, and has been the source of numerous wrongful convictions.  Now, a practitioner of this, um, method has spoken out, and lo and behold, I find myself agreeing with him.  That’s because he now says there is nothing to it.  Of course, this comes after years of testifying to the bite-based guilt of defendants in “dozens” of cases.

With thanks to the Innocence Blog, I see that Dr. Michael West of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, whose bite mark work has sent defendants to prison and even death row, no longer thinks bite mark analysis has any validity.  A Mississippi newspaper reported that in a 2011 deposition, West said that that “I no longer believe in bite-mark analysis.”   In fact, he went further:  ”I don’t think it should be used in court. I think you should use DNA. Throw bite marks out.”

Forensic odontology — the study and analysis of teeth for legal purposes — can be a useful tool.  For example, it is often used, quite successfully, to identify human remains when nothing else can.  But analyzing bite marks to identify perpetrators of crime has never had any scientific validity, and has been proven incorrect in case after case after so-called experts like West used bite marks to send innocent  men and women to jail.

It’s worth noting that, even as West now disavows bite mark analysis, he somehow maintains that his work was correct.  In two different cases of raped and murdered children, West’s bite mark testimony put two defendants behind bars, one on death row for 15 years, the other in prison for 18 years.  When DNA proved that another man had committed both crimes, West refused to back down.  ”I never accused them of killing or raping anybody – just biting them while they were alive.”

Along with the reversal by the remarkable Dr. West, there’s news on the Wrongful Convictions Blog that Douglas Prade, a former police captain from Akron, Ohio, convicted of killing his ex-wife in  a 1998 case largely on “bite mark” evidence, has been exonerated based on DNA.

There is only one real question about bite mark evidence: when will courts ban it?  When is enough damage enough?
http://failedevidence.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/bite-mark-analysis-the-biggest-fail-of-all-failed-evidence/?goback=.gmp_62979.gde_62979_member_144125259