Balko has BM in his sights

Radly Balko - a reporter at the Washington Post and advocate for justice issues and reform in forensic science has released the first of a four part series looking at bitemarks.  Balko has been a long time critic of the science and its apparent lack of reform following the NAS report - published back in 2009.  In his first part he looks at the case of Gerard Richardson who was released in 2013.  He cites the fact that the two odontolgists, looking at the same evidence, reached markedly different views: In fact, when questioned at trial about his methodology — about why he was able to single out Richardson as the biter — Titunik relied on a more detailed report offered by Richardson’s own expert witness, Norman Sperber, also a bite mark analyst. But Sperber, also going off his own report, told jurors there was no way the bite mark could have been left by Gerard Richardson. Two witnesses who called themselves experts relied on the same report and came to diametrically opposing conclusions.

This lack of agreement in forensic experts has been seen in many caseswhere a conviction was later found to be in error.  Balko goes on in his piece to discuss an ethics complaint brought against a major critic of bitemark evidence, Dr Mike Bowers. Two months after Gerard Richardson was released from prison, Peter Loomis, then president of the ABFO, filed an ethics complaint with the AAFS. It was the first time the president of the ABFO had ever filed such a complaint. But Loomis’s complaint wasn’t against Ira Titunik, the man whose testimony sealed Richardson’s conviction. Nor was it against any of the bite mark analysts who have contributed to other false arrests or convictions over the years. Instead, Loomis’s complaint was against Michael Bowers. If successful, the complaint could get Bowers expelled from the AAFS and effectively destroy his credibility as an expert witness. It would remove an important critic from the courtroom. Michael Bowers, a 65-year-old dentist, college professor and deputy medical examiner in Ventura County, Calif. Bowers has seen lots of cases like Richardson’s. He has personally assisted in seven exonerations of people convicted because of bite mark evidence. For about a quarter-century, Bowers has been basically trying to eradicate bite mark matching from the courtroom.

“I’ve watched over and over as these people take the witness stand and give testimony that isn’t just false and misleading, but that has put innocent people in prison,” Bowers says. “It’s such a corruption of justice. But for a long time people just didn’t want to hear about it.”

Balko promises to talk more about the ethics complaint in his later postings. In this video Gerard talks about the first six months since his release.   The Innocence Project cite the work of Balko in a summary article entitled "Washington Post Series Examines Destructive Path of Bite Mark Analysis" - with the annual AAFS meeting just about to start off in Orlando, FL its likely that the next three articles in Balko's series will be as explosive as the first and likely to be topic of much discussion in the bars up and down International Drive.