In 1992, Eddie Lee Howard, a poor black man, was accused of murdering an 84-year-old woman in Lowndes County, Mississippi. Howard had a solid alibi, and the state had no concrete evidence against him. In the original autopsy, the assigned pathologist had found knife wounds, but his report included nothing that would tie the victim specifically to Howard. Investigators needed more. So they brought in “forensic odontologist” Michael West, a Mississippi dentist famous for his ability to use tinted goggles, ultraviolet light, and other gadgets to discover previously unnoticed human bite marks on the bodies of victims. He’d dubbed his self-invented technique the “West Phenomenon.” The victim’s body was disinterred and returned to the morgue. Then, West “got his camera, lenses, UV lights, and yellow goggles out of the trunk of his car and went to work,” writes M. Chris Fabricant in his spellbinding Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System.

West worked alone and never shared the photographs he claimed he took that night. But when he emerged, he announced he’d found three bite marks on the woman’s body. And, after matching those previously unseen marks with a mold of Howard’s teeth, he had determined the bites had been “indeed and without doubt, inflicted by one Eddie Lee Howard.” Forensic odontology was just one discipline in the burgeoning field of crime forensics, the family of supposedly scientific techniques that could identify suspects through tiny fiber or hair...

Read Full Story: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/how-fake-science-corrupts-criminal...