Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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 Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 2:31 am Post subject: Junk science and the death penalty |
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Ray Krone spent 10 years in prison, two on death row, after being convicted through the junk science of bite-mark analysis. What happened next is truly incredible.
http://reason.com/news/show/132574.html
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Plourd was livid that his client could have been convicted not once, but twice, based on obviously erroneous testimony that was presented as scientific. It seemed to confirm what Plourd and other critics of bite-mark analysis have long suspected�that there is little "science" behind the method at all. So in 2001, the lawyer decided to conduct a �proficiency test� on some unknowing and prominent bite-mark expert.
Plourd chose Mississippi dentist Michael West for his test. West had long been under fire for dubious testimony in dozens of criminal cases, including one in which he claimed to be able to match the bite marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich found at the crime scene to the dentition of a defendant.
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In October 2001, working for Plourd, a private investigator named James Rix sent West the decade-old photographs of the bite marks on Ancona�s breast. Rix told West that the photos were from the three-year-old unsolved murder of a college student in Idaho. Rix then sent West a dental mold of his own teeth, but told him that they came from the chief suspect in the case. He also sent a check for $750, West's retainer fee.
Two months later, West sent Rix a letter and accompanying 20-minute video. In the video, West meticulously explains the methodology he uses to match bite marks to dental molds. Using the photo of Ancona�s bitten breast and Rix's own dental mold, West then reaches the conclusion Plourd and Rix suspected he would: That the mold and the photos were a definite match.
"Notice as I flex the photograph across these teeth how it conforms to the outline very nicely," West explains confidently. "The odds of that happening if these weren�t the teeth that created this bite would be almost astronomical." He adds that the "matching" patterns he found between the photo and the dental mold "could only lead an odontologist to one opinion and that [is] these teeth did create that mark." |
The man is willing to help toss innocent people onto death row for $750. |
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