"Bite
mark evidence should be inadmissible in the courtroom until researchers
can establish basic criteria to measure its reliability, members of the
Texas Forensic Science Commission said Thursday.
In a move that
could resonate across courts nationwide, the state commission is
expected to vote Friday on whether to recommend a temporary moratorium
on the use of such evidence in criminal proceedings until further study
is conducted. The panel doesn’t have the power to ban it altogether, but
its decision is likely to influence judges and prosecutors in Texas,
and it could have a ripple effect in other states. “As
it just now stands, it’s too subjective, and as a result, I am ready to
face the absence of it in court,” said commission member Richard
Alpert, a Tarrant County assistant district attorney. Dr. Vincent
DiMaio, former chief medical examiner for Dallas and Bexar counties,
said there is a potential to allow such evidence in the courtroom in the
future, but “I think at the present time, the bite mark examination
doesn’t rise to the level of forensic discipline.” Thursday’s
discussion of bite mark evidence comes as the Texas Forensic Science
Commission has become one of the nation’s most important forensic
science policy groups. The commission is leading the review of hundreds
of old cases in an effort to halt the prosecutions of innocent people
based on outdated science, including
inaccurate interpretations of DNA evidence. It has also launched an investigation into hair analysis. Those
who support using bite mark evidence in court, which has been allowed
in the U.S. since 1975, contend the practice has helped convict child
abusers and serial killer Ted Bundy. But at least two dozen defendants
convicted or charged with murder or rape based on bite marks have been
exonerated in the United States since 2000. One of those defendants was
Steven Chaney, who spent nearly three decades in prison for the murder
of a Dallas man in 1987......... Panel members
said the commission on Friday should make recommendations to establish
clear criteria or guidelines for identifying what constitutes a human
bite mark on skin, for minimizing false negatives and false conclusions,
and for distinguishing the difference between an adult bite mark and
that of a child. Without such a foundation, panel members said, the evidence should be kept out of the courtroom. Chris
Fabricant, director of strategic litigation at the Innocence Project,
applauded the move. “This commission’s findings are incredibly
significant because no other scientific body has ever opined on the
admissibility of bite mark analysis, and it is 50 years overdue,”
Fabricant said."
http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news/texas-forensic-experts-call-for-ban-on-bite-mark-e/nqNzK/