Non-science Prosecutors like to exaggerate quite a lot when their past convictions used junk science. Their understanding of “science” really means that the old methods still work. Just like the “Flat-Earthers” from the Middle Ages.
This National DA Assoc president works in San Bernardino County, among other things a place where bitemarks helped put an innocent Bill Richards in prison for 23 years.
Ramos (campaigning for California’s Attorney General post and pro death penalty) has a sterling opinion about bitemark “matching.” Here is his and his org’s “final” 7 page response to the President’s Science Council’s Report. The part about teeth is excerpted below in italics.
As a colleague of mine puts it (in bold):
The NDAA letter to PCAST grossly overstates the success of testimony against University of Buffalo bitemark studies. Never were the studies “thoroughly discredited in court.” Almost similar to saying the possibility of someone else having the same dentition as “one in a million”. The rest of the commentary is also interesting, including the use of specialized computer programs ( Adobe Photoshop? ) to perform analysis.
Forensic Odontology
Forensic dentists…
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