Bite Marks

Additional context for discussion at pages 246-249

The Netflix show The Innocence Files and other media provides further context for the bite mark case quoted on page 246 — Brooks v. State, 748 So. 2d 736 (Miss. 1999). The “forensic odontologist” referenced in the excerpt is notorious for unreliability as explained in various books, see Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington, The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist (2018); M. Chris Fabricant, Junk Science (2022) and this article. See also Howard v. State, 945 So. 2d 326, 352 (Miss. 2006) (“Just because Dr. West has been wrong a lot, does not mean, without something more, that he was wrong here.”).

DNA evidence would later clear Levon Brooks, the defendant in the case, after he had served 16 years in prison. Both Dr. West and Brooks are featured in the Netflix show The Innocence Files.

Confronted with West’s unreliability and the unraveling of the field, Mississippi has backtracked on its approval. Howard v. State, 300 So. 3d 1011, 1019 (Miss. 2020) (“After reviewing the record, we conclude that Howard’s evidence as to the change in the scientific understanding of the reliability of identification through bite-mark comparisons was almost uncontested. Based on this record, we agree with Howard that a forensic dentist would not be permitted to identify Howard as the biter today as Dr. West did at Howard’s trial in 2000.”: “[A]t most, he or she would be limited to opining that Howard ‘could not be excluded’ as the source of the bite marks.”)