4/12/16 A Virginia man who was falsely convicted of murder (originally sentenced to death, the sentence was commuted), and who served 33 years in prison was just released from prison when the State agreed that supposed scientifically reliable bite mark evidence led to a false conviction. In the case, experts had testified that bite mark evidence was scientifically reliable evidence, whereas scientists now agree it is not scientifically reliable. Other than the bite mark evidence there was little evidence to tie the man to the crime and, in fact, a DNA test proved the murder had been committed by another person.
At this point is it not known how many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were wrongfully convicted of crimes and sentenced to death or long prison terms because of this scientifically unreliable evidence. Indeed, the Texas Forensic Sciences Commission issued a recommendation to ban the use of bite mark evidence in February, due to the increasing number of cases where positive identification of a bite mark to a person in a criminal case has been proven to be false through DNA evidence. Thereafter, the American Board of Forensic Odontology issued new guidelines to its members urging caution, and recommending past cases be revisited to identify similar injustices.
For more on this story, see the washingtonpost.com article below:
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