Did Forensic Doctor and Dentist Create Evidence of Guilt?

by Deb Cupples |  So, not all real-world people handle evidence in criminal cases as ethically as the folks on CSI.  No surprise there, given the widespread use of private doctors who might profit from the unethical handling of evidence.

Reason Magazine tells us that a respected, two-man team of forensic "experts" may have actually manufactured evidence that ended up helping convict innocent people of crimes:

"For most of the last 20 years, doctors Steven Hayne and Michael West have served as expert forensic witnesses for the state of Mississippi. Until 2008, Hayne served as the de facto state medical examiner, dominating a criminal autopsy market in which prosecutors contract out examinations to favored private doctors. West, a dentist, served one term as the elected coroner in Forest County, Mississippi in the 1990s and partly through his work with Hayne became a popular bite-mark examiner among prosecutors.

Popular?  Favored Status?  What, prey tell, might make a prosecutor "favor" one forensic scientist over another?  The consistent handing over of evidence that makes people look guilty, perhaps?

If that's the case, then the privatization of forensic services might come with some massive, built in problems: i.e., mis-aligned incentives.  Reason Magazine continues:

"Both men have come under intense scrutiny for questionable working procedures and dubious testimony—West off and on for 15 years, Hayne mostly in the last two. Reason has been following Hayne's deteriorating career since an October 2006 article that detailed his role in putting a possibly innocent man named Cory Maye on death row (see an archive of our Hayne-related reporting at: www.reason.com/hayne)."

I must interject: how could any government official continue to the two-man team of "scientists" on the public if their ethics and practices have been questionable enough that a respected magazine has spent more than two years "following" one team member's "deteriorating career"?  Reason continues:

"Last year, two men that Hayne and West helped convict of murder in the early 1990s, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, were exonerated and freed from prison through DNA testing after serving more than 30 years combined behind bars. Both men had been accused of raping and murdering the daughters of their respective girlfriends. In what has come to be a pattern with the two doctors, in each case Hayne claimed to have found in an initial autopsy what other examiners missed: bite marks on the victim's body.

"He then called in West, a forensic odontologist (dental examiner), who definitively matched bite marks to the defendants. Partly because of the testimony from Hayne and West, Brooks was sentenced to life in prison, and Brewer to death (he spent 14 years on death row). DNA testing in 2008 determined that the semen found on both girls belonged to a third man, 51-year-old Albert Johnson. As Brooks and Brewer were freed, Johnson confessed to both crimes.

"The Brooks and Brewer cases form their own forensics riddle: How could West and Hayne have definitively linked previously undetected bite marks on the victims to two men who didn't commit the murders?

The story gets worse.  Apparently, the  prosecutor-favored forensic team  may have tampered with evidence to make a defendant look guilty of having bitten a toddler:

"Reason recently obtained shocking video from another Hayne and West collaboration that may shed light on the question. In 1993, the two conducted an examination on a 23-month-old girl named Haley Oliveaux of West Monroe, Louisiana, who had drowned in her bathtub.

"The video shows bite marks mysteriously appearing on the toddler's face during the time she was in the custody of Hayne and West. It then shows West repeatedly and methodically pressing and scraping a dental mold of a man's teeth on the dead girl's skin. Forensic scientists who have viewed the footage say the video reveals not only medical malpractice, but criminal evidence tampering."

You can see the rest of the Reason article and a video here.

As usual, Memeorandum has commentary.

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* Investigators Look into Bribery by Senior Military Officers: Should Look Higher

Comments

[flowerplough]

Did Forensic Doctor and Dentist Create Evidence of Guilt? Duh? Cops lie? Say it ain't so, Joe! And don't even try to tell me that pretty girls fart. I don't want to hear it.

[Deb]

Hi Flower,

You are too funny!

[beverly hills veneers]

who definitively matched bite marks to the defendants, thank to your blog lots of sense.

by: alpha

[Los Angeles Dentist]

There are deeper lie hides among people on the medical field and that's the truth because these people or kind of profession really needed lies in order to satisfy the patient.