Excuse my incredulity but I couldn’t believe it when I read this article.  I am amazed that this could ever be used as part of a court case – does it meet either the Daubert or Frye tests (I admit I don’t know which, if either, applies in Texas but all the same, there must be some similar standard to which findings need to reach before being presented as part of a court case)?  Anyway, read and see what you think.

“Texas group asks DAs to stop using scent IDs

21 September 2009, chron.com/AP Texas News

“Now is the time for the state of Texas … to step up and do the right thing to prohibit the use of not only dog scent lineups but to ensure there is a scientific basis for any forensic technique used in court,” said Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas.

During a news conference, the group released a report claiming there have been at least four cases in which five innocent people were arrested following scent ID lineups conducted by a Fort Bend sheriff’s deputy, Keith Pikett, who trains dogs. Two of the individuals were jailed for capital murder before the charges were dropped.

In the scent identification lineups in question, dogs trained by Pikett determine if a suspect’s smell matches the smell of crime scene evidence.  Proponents of scent lineups argue each person has a unique smell and dogs can differentiate between subtle differences.  Pikett’s attorney, Randall Morse, has said his client has done nothing wrong and is considered a well-respected law enforcement official who has consulted for the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies.  Pikett is being sued by two people who claim they were wrongly implicated in crimes because of his scent lineups.

“We had five innocent people sent to jail. Everyone should be concerned that innocent people are being locked up,” said Stanley Schneider, president of Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.  Curvis Bickham said he was one of the people falsely accused in dog scent lineups done by Pikett.  In late 2007, Bickham and another man were charged with capital murder for a triple homicide in Houston after he was placed at the home where the bodies were found by one of Pikett’s dogs. Months later, both men were released and charges against them were dropped.  “There’s no way I could have been at this scene. I never stepped a foot on that property. To be charged with this crime is wrong,” said a tearful Bickham.  Bickham, 49, said his wrongful arrest resulted in him losing his home and in losing business at his barbecue stand.

Blackburn called on the Texas Forensic Science Commission to conduct a full investigation into the use of scent lineups and asked prosecutors around the state to stop using them in criminal cases.  Chairman Sam Bassett said someone would need to first file a complaint with the commission before it could look at the issue and determine if there was negligence or misconduct in the application of forensic science. The commission was created by the Legislature in 2005.  A spokesperson for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association could not immediately be reached for comment.”

For those outside New Zealand who aren’t aware, two bodies were found beneath the floor of a house two weeks ago in Christchurch, South Island.  They were the bodies of a woman who had been missing for a year and the body of the wife of the man who lived in the house – this man has been charged with murder.  Analogies have been drawn with the West house in Gloucester, England, under which many bodies were discovered in the early 1990s.  The Gloucester House of Horrors was demolished several years after Fred & Rosemary had been convicted and a year after Fred had hung himself in his prison cell.  Every brick and timber was crushed to prevent people collecting souvenirs.  The Christchurch house was the focus of an arson attack yesterday, apparently leaving the property severely damaged.

My only hope is that all evidence required from the Christchurch house had been collected before the fire.  Remember that the Bain house at 65 Every Street, Dunedin, NZ, was burnt to the ground with the permission of the Police only two weeks after the murders in 1994 and significant forensic evidence was destroyed with it.

Horror House fire ‘turning point’ says mayor

21 September 2009, NZ Herald online

A fire that gutted the Christchurch “House of Horrors” is a “turning point” for the community, Mayor Bob Parker says.  The bodies of Tisha Lowry, 28, and Rebecca Sarah Somerville, 35, were found underneath the semi-detached house in suburban Wainoni earlier this month.  Mrs Somerville’s husband, Jason Somerville, 33, who lived with his wife at the property, has been charged with murdering both women.  Ms Lowry lived a couple of doors along from the property when she went missing a year ago.

The blaze, which gutted the property late Saturday, was being treated as suspicious.

Mr Parker said a “memorial to murder most foul has been erased”.  “I think, if we’re honest, right across the community there was a sense it would happen,” he told The Press.  He was working with the Aranui Community Trust to decide what to do with the property.

Detective Sergeant Craig Farrant said the house had “been extensively damaged throughout”.  “Obviously, it’s of a suspicious nature it’s arson, let’s not beat around the bush.”  Mr Farrant said he could not condone such “Robin Hood-type” behaviour.  Neighbour Jason Hall, who owns the adjoining property, was angry the house was not destroyed under controlled conditions.  “It should have been knocked down a week ago. With a fire of that size, anything could happen. It could well have hurt other people.”

When writing reports I am always very careful about using the word “evidence”.  A colleague once recounted a story to me about an experience he had in court in the early stages of his career.  He had used the word “evidence” in his report when talking about what he had found during his examinations at the laboratory.  The judge leaned towards him and said “Young man, it is not for you to tell the Court what is evidence.  Evidence is what I allow to be heard by the jury in my courtroom.  Until I allow it to be heard and accepted in my courtroom, what you have in your report are scientific findings and nothing more.”

The moral of the story is: don’t presume that what you have written will be accepted as evidence.  It’s only evidence if it is accepted as such by the Judge.  A scientist’s findings are exactly that – their findings.  Oh, and never upset the judge – not a wise move whatever way one looks at it.

The following article appeared in Science Daily on 17 September 2009.  It seems that this field of expertise, bitemarks, has fallen foul of the usual criticisms of unusual evidence types – the lack of an adequate, representative database for interpretation of information in a given case.  Without such a database there is no real way to objectively and statistically interpret scientific findings.   Attempting to present such scientific findings as evidence in court often fails because the science does not meet the basic criteria for evidence to be presented in court; depending on the jurisdiction that may be the Daubert or Frye rules or just whether the evidence is reliable, relevant and repeatable. This criticism has been levelled at several areas of forensic science notably, in my career anyway, drug traces on banknotes.

I also remember there was a famous case in the UK where an IRA bomber ate an apple at a “location of interest”, discarded the core and the core was recovered by the Police.  His dental alignment was compared with the apple core and he was positively identified as being the apple eater.  From distant memory, this linked the apple-eater into a significant terrorist event.  This was in the days before DNA. In today’s courtroom, it’s unlikely that the apple bite would be accepted as evidence in isolation; corroborating evidence would be required because, on its own’ it’s circumstantial and potentially more prejudicial than probative.

On a lighter  but practical note, I’m glad they used stone teeth in the following study, rather than live people to bite the cadavers….

“Bitemark evidence and analysis should be approached with caution, according to study

Against the backdrop of last week’s [US] Congressional hearing into the future of forensic science, researchers from the University at Buffalo’s Laboratory for Forensic Odontology Research in the School of Dental Medicine, have published a landmark paper on the controversial topic of bitemark analysis.  The Congressional hearing focused on the findings of a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report on the scientific basis of forensic disciplines. Among the pattern evidence fields (fingerprints, tool marks, etc.) that were reviewed in the NAS report, bitemark analysis received critical commentary. During the hearing, Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld introduced Roy Brown, wrongfully convicted on bitemark evidence and later exonerated through DNA analysis.

In anticipation of the NAS report, the new UB study published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences challenges the commonly held belief that every bitemark can be perpetrator identified.  “Bitemark identification is not as reliable as DNA identification,” explains the study’s lead author Raymond G. Miller, D.D.S., UB clinical associate professor of oral diagnostic sciences.  “With DNA, the probability of an individual not matching another can be calculated,” he says. “In bitemark analysis, there have been few studies that looked at how many people’s teeth could have made the bite.”

Miller’s co-authors include UB’s Peter J. Bush; Robert Dorion, D.D.S., DABFO, UB adjunct professor of oral diagnostic sciences; and Mary A. Bush, D.D.S., UB assistant professor of restorative dentistry. Dorion is the editor of the only comprehensive textbook on the subject of bitemarks in forensic science, Bitemark Evidence: A Color Atlas and Text, and is currently the odontology section representative to the board of directors of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

The current study investigated three main questions: is it possible to determine biter identity among people with similarly aligned teeth; is it possible to determine how many individuals from a larger sample might also be considered as the biter; and, if there is bite pattern distortion, is it enough to rule out a specific biter while still including a non-biter?

To answer these questions, the researchers gathered 100 stone dental models (replicas of the dentition), which were measured and divided into 10 groups based upon the misalignment patterns of the teeth. After randomly selecting one model from each of the 10 groups, the researchers impressed bitemarks on cadaver skin. After the bitemarks were created, they were then photographed and the indentations were compared to the dentitions using overlays created with photographic software.

The authors are one of the first to use a human skin model rather than animal models or non-elastic biting substrate, such as wax or Styrofoam. Current human subject restrictions limit experimentation on living subjects.  “Living bitten tissue may bleed or bruise,” explains Miller. “The initial bitemark indentations rebound shortly after infliction often leaving a diffuse bruising that may be difficult to measure accurately. The indentations produced in our study represented the best conditions for measurement.”

The results indicated that when dental alignments were similar, it was difficult to distinguish which set of teeth made the bites. Distortion noted in the bitemarks allowed matches even from different alignment groups. Therefore, the researchers concluded that bitemarks should be very carefully evaluated in criminal investigations where perpetrator identity is the focus of a case.

As Miller notes, “In the past 10 years, the number of court cases involving bitemark evidence that have been overturned led us to question the reasons for the erroneous bitemark identification. It’s important to recognize the serious consequences of a misidentification for the accused, the victim, the families involved, the justice system and the possibility that the perpetrator is still at large.”