Radley Balko has been writing for years about the worthlessness of “bite mark” analysis, which has been used to convict hundreds, maybe thousands, of people around the country. Michael West, a dentist who specialized in such analysis, has now admitted that it’s all bunk. And Balko makes a brief return from his book-writing hiatus to document it:
“I no longer believe in bite-mark analysis.”
That’s infamous bite mark “specialist” Michael West, in a deposition last year for the Leigh Stubbs case.
This, after West put dozens of people in prison with bite mark testimony, including several on death row. Two of them, Eddie Lee Howard in Mississippi and Jimmie Duncan in Louisiana, are still awaiting execution.
The office of Mississippi Attorney Jim Hood so far has so far refused to go back and reopen all the old cases in which West has testified. Hood should have done that a long time ago. For that matter, the same goes for Hood’s predecessors. And the Mississippi Supreme Court. We’ve known for nearly 20 years now that this guy was a fraud. Hell,we’ve had video evidence. Lots of it.
Will Hood’s office still defend convictions won on West’s testimony now that even West himself concedes his field of expertise is quackery?
That’s an easy question to answer: No, he won’t, unless he’s forced to do so by the courts. Nor will any other prosecutor around the country, with the possible exception of Craig Watkins in Dallas (if he has anyone in that district convicted on the basis of bite mark evidence). Because most prosecutors don’t care about guilt or innocence, they care about protecting the public image of their office — and overturning false convictions hurts that image and makes people think they’re not infallible.
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Bronze Dog
August 9, 2012 at 10:28 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Had an odd moment thinking about this, a la “Darwin/Pasteur recanted” trope.
That brief moment aside, I have no trouble imagining the problems for bite analysis that would prevent it from being accurate. A fight that involves biting would probably generate all sorts of “noise,” along with whatever healing the victim’s injury went through between the crime and the inspection of the wound. Granted, there’d be some cases where it’d be useful but relatively obvious, like if the suspect and the bite mark were both missing the same tooth.
wholething
August 9, 2012 at 10:40 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I remember watching Lassie when I was a kid. In one show, Lassie was accused of biting a boy so they had a courtroom trial. The defense attorney threw a stick to Lassie and she caught in her mouth. They compared the teeth marks on the stick to the bite mark on the boy and Lassie was exonerated. Are we to believe that the evidence was inconclusive and Lassie may have been guilty?
zmidponk
August 9, 2012 at 11:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
wholething, a little bit of advice – sarcasm doesn’t come out too strong in the written word. You need to be a bit more obvious about it to make it clear it’s sarcasm, mainly because that kind of argument is precisely what you might hear in defence of not re-examining these cases, you know, because the US justice system is so perfect and flawless, and never, ever, ever, ever wrongly convicts anyone, as you would know from reading this blog.
theschwa
August 9, 2012 at 12:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
HA! Hey Wholething, I caught a random Lassie episode a few weeks ago on some channel in the 300s and it was THAT episode! (I never watch Lassie, it was on in the background while I played Minecraft, I think). What a crazy coincidence.
…waitaminute! It is a sign. God made it happen! God is real. I repent my sins and accept Jesus into my heart (after he wipes his feet, of course!)
StevoR
August 9, 2012 at 12:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@^ theschwa : But does that mean God is real or Lassie is?
I think you should belieeve in dog!
Actually I think Lassie has the Xn god beat – god = three inone versus ithink about five or six or more dogs for the one’n'only “Lassie” of the show.
StevoR
August 9, 2012 at 12:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wikicheck turns up :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lassie#Portrayers
Seems to say there’s about ten “lassies” – & all male dogies too! O-o
slc1
August 9, 2012 at 2:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Although bite mark analysis is pseudoscience as far as finding a match is concerned, it can be useful as exclusionary evidence. This is similar to the old ABO blood type analysis. If the sample was type A and the person of interest is type B, he/she can be excluded as the source of the blood. However, if both the sample and person of interest are type A, that doesn’t prove much of anything.
Modusoperandi
August 9, 2012 at 3:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
wholething “I remember watching Lassie when I was a kid. In one show, Lassie was accused of biting a boy so they had a courtroom trial.”
That was the Matlock crossover. And don’t forget the Murder She Wrote one, where she got Lassie off a murder charge when Timmy disappeared. (Spoiler Alert: It turned out he fell down a well)
jnorris
August 9, 2012 at 8:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s not it, the prosecutors are afraid for their political careers and nothing but their political careers. Convictions make them tough on crime and that means votes.
Infophile
August 10, 2012 at 1:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
On a related note, here’s a story I recently came across in which many innocent men (even the prosecutors admit they’re innocent) are being locked up in federal prisons, and the Justice Department is arguing that they must remain locked up despite their innocence. You see, there isn’t a procedure in the books for releasing people who were imprisoned for something that was never a crime in the first place, and so they can’t be released. At least, that’s the reason they claim for this. I doubt that there are many people in the Justice Department that are quite that maliciously literal. It’s probably the same thing as in the case cited here by Ed: They just don’t want to make themselves look bad by being seen to release innocent people from prison.
To people like us, this has the reverse effect, and they look all the worse. But sadly, most people aren’t like us. Soundbites of “Letting criminals out onto the streets!” rule the day. The system is broken, and unfortunately, I don’t see any feasible way to fix it.
Pinky
August 10, 2012 at 8:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks for pointing out the article Infophile.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that news group doing analysis in length and depth.
slc1
August 10, 2012 at 8:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re jnorris @ #9
That’s not it, the prosecutors are afraid for their political careers and nothing but their political careers. Convictions make them tough on crime and that means votes.
It’s actually much worse then that. Prosecutors are afraid that if too many convicted individuals are later found to be innocent and released from jail, the publicity that ensues will cause jurors to become more reluctant to convict. This is especially true in capital cases, where jurors, hearing about individuals on death row being proved innocent and released, may become more reluctant to apply capital punishment.
Dalillama, Schmott Guy
August 10, 2012 at 12:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ Infophile #10
Besides the ‘looking bad’ aspect, there’s also the punitive authoritarian aspect. All of the people in that article were previously convicted of some other crime, which in the minds of a distressingly large number of Americans means that they should be locked up forever if not just executed, and whatever pretext it takes to keep punishing them will be gleefully embraced. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if a lot of people in the Justice Department are of this mindset, for a variety of reasons.
hypatiasdaughter
August 12, 2012 at 9:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
From the videos you linked to, it appears that Michael West falsified the evidence – the videos showed no marks on the body, then, voila! suddenly, there is a bite mark and bruising. Balko’s site says little more than what you wrote.
Is this an issue of bite mark analysis being junk science – or of someone planting false evidence? Committing forensic fraud – manufacturing and/or planting evidence – doesn’t make the science bad, just the practitioner.
I am not informed enough to take a side on the issue – merely curious if the whole science of bite mark analysis has been refuted?