ipl-logo

Bite Mark Analysis Essay

562 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The evolution of forensic sciences over time

Bite mark analysis has been portrayed as technology based and definitive in crime television for decades which is far from the truth. In 1984, an established bite mark analyst, Doctor L. Thomas Johnson, falsely testified to the jury that Robert Stinson was a murderer. Dr. Johnson’s testimony was based on inaccurate assessments of a bite mark found on the victim’s body. This mark was compared to the dental examination of the suspect leading Stinson to be found guilty of all charges. He spent the next 23 years convicted in a Wisconsin prison. However, it was later found that he was innocent. This case pulled the field of forensic dentistry into question for validity. Bite mark analysis was not technologically advanced enough to be used as evidence …show more content…

Dental examinations provide forensic teams with the information required from the suspects teeth in order to reach a consensus. While dental examinations are able to support evidence, bite mark analysis is not accurate enough to do so. Skin does not reliably record the dimensions of teeth, therefore assembling inaccurate predictions on who the suspect is. Bite mark analysis is considered a pattern matching discipline within the field of forensic dentistry. Disciplines such as this are determined by assessments rather than statistics. Television shows involving murder cases and crime such as Bones, Criminal Minds, and NCIS have tricked viewers into believing this forensic science is a simple process.
Misrepresentation of forensic science in mainstream crime shows lead audiences to believe technology has the ability to report one accurate consensus within minutes when provided with a dental imprint. In reality, receiving an accurate consensus when examining a dental impression on human skin is rare. The Stinson case sparked media interest, leading consumers to this assumption. However, bite mark analysis has never been error rate tested, meaning the validity of this science has not yet been determined. Many studies have been able to provide evidence as to why these inaccuracies

Show More
Related

Jeffrey Moldowan And Michael Cristin

154 Words | 1 Pages

Jeffrey Moldowan and Michael Cristini, two men from Macomb County, Michigan, went on trial accused of rape and assault. The primary evidence against them consisted of the victim’s eyewitness identification and bite mark analysis by two dentists. Both dentists testified that the bite marks on the woman’s body matched the teeth of Cristini and Moldowan. One of those dentists, Allan Warnick, testified that the likelihood a bite mark on the female victim was made by someone other than Moldowan, “was at least 3 million to 1.” Later, the other dentist, Dr. Pamela Hammel recanted her testimony, saying that she had been uncertain that either defendant had in fact been responsible for the bite marks.

Read More

Bobbie Davis V. Carter Case

977 Words | 4 Pages

Later in 1997, Graves was granted another post-conviction hearing. degree witness declared that the testimony concerning a knife at Graves’ trial was dishonest. At the trial, a prosecution witness same tests showed that a knife that was identical joined once owned by Graves may would like created the injuries inflicted on the victims. Dr. Harrell Gill-King, director of the Laboratory of rhetorical branch of knowledge and Human Identification, testified that the prosecution conclusions concerning the knife were unreliable.

Read More

Case Study Of John's Wrongful Conviction: Flawed Pathology Evidence

1139 Words | 5 Pages

This represented the power and position of forensic pathology in the criminal justice system, which the Crown and defence rely on, but can end in incarcerations of innocent individuals, as shown in John’s case. In this investigation, rather than having evidence presented by a forensic pathologist, Dr. Dietrich was a clinical pathologist who was trained to determine causes of disease in living patients and not to perform post-mortem examinations to identify the causes of death. John’s trial was proceeded by an unqualified pathologist without training in the area required to provide medical evidence in criminal trials, which lead to misdiagnoses and John’s wrongful conviction. As well, rather than approaching evidence with an open mind “without preconceptions or presumptions about abuse”, Dr. Dietrich had initially believed Maxine’s death was a homicide, therefore demonstrating his bias and lean towards evidence supporting his view instead of the truthful information

Read More

Summary Of Getting Life By Michael Morton

1667 Words | 7 Pages

Even when Michael’s new defense team, through the innocence project, found a crime that was eerily similar to the method of murder and subsequent events to the one that Michael was convicted of, the new prosecutor in Williamson County fought hard to keep DNA testing from taking place, even stating that they objected to the testing now because the defense hadn’t requested it before (Morton, 2014). There was further evidence of ineffectiveness in that the coroner who’d changed his estimated time of death between the autopsy and trial, had come under scrutiny for his findings in this case, as well as several others, with claims of gross errors “including one case where he came to the conclusion that a man who’d been stabbed in the back had committed suicide” (Morton, 2014). This was only one of the many injustices that were committed against Michael Morton throughout his trial. In August of 2006, the defense was finally granted permission to perform DNA testing on the items that had been taken from his wife’s body (Morton, 2014). Although this testing did not reveal any information about the guilty party, it did at least give Michael the knowledge that Chris was not sexually violated before or after her death (Morton,

Read More

Karla Brown Case Study

214 Words | 1 Pages

Investigator acknowledge, “That they now had a lead to work from but it would be easy to prove caught the suspect unless they had teeth comparison”. In 1982, the case finally had a big break, when a woman reported hearing a male name Mr. John Prante stating, “He biting Ms. Brown on her shoulder.” Law enforcement agency, gather a warrant

Read More

Paul Bernardo Research Papers

795 Words | 4 Pages

It was in May 1990 when a victim was able to give the Police a description of what the offender looked like, and the forensic serology and odontology methods were used to generate computer composite portrait of the rapist which was published in newspapers, thereafter Paul Bernardo was first identified along with some other suspects. Paul was interviewed by the police, he convinced them he was not responsible, but according to follow procedure the police collected Paul’s samples of hair, blood and saliva for DNA testing. They also collected similar samples from over 130 other suspects for DNA to see if there would be a match. This type of forensic science was new in Canada and the Center of Forensic Science in Toronto had only one qualified technician and scientist. Police later used telephone tapping method to monitor Paul and other

Read More

Assignment Experiment: Roy Brown Through The Innocence Project

806 Words | 4 Pages

First one said, that it matched Roy Browns bite marks. Second one said it couldn’t be him because he was missing two upper teeth and it had a full set of teeth on Sabina. This suggests that it could be him but also couldn’t be him with the bite marks. In conclusion the evidence that was provided were DNA samples and the bite

Read More

Bennett Barbour Case

586 Words | 3 Pages

On April 14, 1978, Barbour was convicted of rape and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Detectives reported even though they could not find anything to make Barbour guilty, they still had doubts and would continue to investigate him (Barbour, 2012). In 2001 the Virginia Department of Forensic Science released information about serologist who examine blood type and physical evidence from the year 1973 through 1988 kept the samples in those years (Barbour, 2012) . In 2004 Virginia’s Governor, Mark Warner ordered 800 cases to be retested this project. The project was scheduled to take 18 months but took 7 years.

Read More

Bennett Barbour Research Papers

777 Words | 4 Pages

Jami Bull Mr. Mollenger Forensics Science 23 February 2018 Power of Proof The Innocence Project is a non-profit legal organization that helps people prove their innocence when wrongfully convicted through new DNA testing. 70% of eyewitnesses misidentified and 45% involved misapplication of forensic science. (“DNA Exonerations in the United States.”)

Read More

John Wayne Gacy Research Paper

986 Words | 4 Pages

In this paper I will be comparing contrasting two various aspects of forensic sciences used, and talking about the different tactics used to identify suspects; as well as the contrasts between the two methods. The man I will be talking about is John Wayne Gacy. The two methods I will be going over are, Finger print DNA and Forensic toxicology. These two are very similar, but made substantial differences in the evidence in his case. John Wayne Gacy was a murderer from Chicago, Illinois.

Read More

Who Is Roy Brown Accused Of The Bite Murder?

538 Words | 3 Pages

The prosecution had not uncovered that another analysis had analyzed the bite marks prier to the trial and had prohibited Brown as the cause. A defense professional stated that the six bite marks were inadequate for examination and the seventh excluded Brown because it had two more upper teeth than he had. The saliva from the shirt and bite imprint swabs were examined with uncertain results. In 1995, Brown looked for testing on the bite mark swabs,

Read More

The American Justice System By Nicole Flatow Summary

957 Words | 4 Pages

In his interview with Ana Swanson, a writer for the Washington Post, Adam Benforado, a law professor at Drexel University describes a case he studied that was a wrong verdict. Benforado explains that there was a rape case in 1979 and the victim was brought in to identify her attacker out of five men. The victim had previously been given pictures of these five men to identify and she could not. In the lineup, she picked John Jerome White as her attacker and he was immediately sentenced to prison for decades. Swanson continues writing that the DNA from the case was tested a couple of years later and White was not the rapist.

Read More

Summary Of The Lyle And Louise Case

904 Words | 4 Pages

The arson evidence relates to the car crash and how the car was burned to hide the evidence. The evidence from the bite mark cleared up my client, John’s story who stated he was in a bar fight the night prior to when being questioned. The use of blood spatter helped investigators determine where the victim was killed in the cabin and how many possible killers there were. Blood detection helped discover what killed the

Read More

Richard Ramirez Analysis

1776 Words | 8 Pages

Among them were things like distinguishing slash wounds in five murders across the victim's necks, similar handcuff marks on various victims' wrists and blunt force head trauma to half of the victims (Chen, 1989.) Shoe prints were also left at the scene of two murders, the shoe prints had to be either a visible print, plastic print or latent print. Examiners use several methods in the collection of shoe prints depending on the type of impression that is left at the scene of the crime. For collections in soil, which was where the print was found in the Ramirez case, casting is the most commonly used collection method for analyzation. The evaluation and comparison of impression evidence is usually performed by a trained footwear and tire mark examiner (NFSTC, 2013).

Read More

Murder Of Gaven Brooks Essay

444 Words | 2 Pages

Every day forensic investigators use tactics just like the ones that were discussed throughout the paper. It’s more than just looking for an admission of guilt, and interrogating potential suspects until they

Read More

More about Bite Mark Analysis Essay

Related Topics

Open Document