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Thread: Eddie Lee Howard, Jr. - Mississippi

  1. #11
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Bite mark evidence for death row inmate again called into question

    The post-conviction relief hearing for a Lowndes County death row inmate convicted in a 25-year-old murder case ended Monday.

    Lowndes County Circuit Court Judge Lee Howard has 60 days to rule in the case of 64-year-old Eddie Lee Howard, who was convicted in 2000 of the rape and murder of 84-year-old Georgia Kemp. The judge could vacate the conviction, order a new trial or uphold the previous conviction.

    Kemp was found stabbed to death in her home in February 1992.

    The Mississippi Innocence Project, housed at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, is representing Howard, arguing that the prosecution's only physical evidence linking the defendant to the crime is bite mark testimony of Hattiesburg forensic odontologist Michael West.

    Bite mark analysis, Innocence Project attorneys argued in briefs filed with the Mississippi Supreme Court, is a "pernicious pseudo science" that has been debunked since being used in cases in the 1990s and early 2000s. Attorneys also argue DNA found on the murder weapon does not match Howard's.

    At Monday's hearing, the Innocence Project's Strategic Litigation director Chris Fabricant questioned West, who repeatedly defended his opinion that the bite marks he claimed to discover on Kemp's body matched dental molds from Howard.

    "I remember having my highest opinion as to the perpetrator who left the bite marks," he said. "It was Eddie Lee Howard."

    When asked if he were aware DNA evidence from the crime had been tested, West said: "I find it to be a joke. You tested the blade, not the handle."

    West examined the body and found the bite marks after Kemp's body had already been buried and exhumed. That examination was four days after the initial autopsy, and the medical examiner's autopsy report had no mention of any bite marks, Fabricant said.

    But West said the initial examiner probably didn't see them because "minute" injuries often need to "age" and are not visible until after the body has dried out. He added the examiner also didn't look at the body under ultraviolet light, which also would have helped see the injuries.

    West entirely dismissed the idea that the marks he saw could have been caused by the first autopsy.

    "If I had thought that the previous examination had damaged an area, I would not have included it in my analysis," he said.

    A more than yearlong hearing

    The hearing ended more than a year after it began in May 2016, when Iain Pretty, a professor of dentistry from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, testified there was not a "fundamental scientific underpinning" for bite mark analysis and that the National Academy of Sciences reported in 2009 that bite marks cannot reliably identify individuals.

    Howard's case has been a legal tangle since his first trial in 1994, when Howard represented himself. The Mississippi Supreme Court overturned the conviction in that case after finding the trial court had failed to hold an adequate competency hearing, according to Supreme Court documents.

    Howard was convicted in a second trial in 2000. He has been on death row ever since.

    In both trials, the prosecution used West's analysis as evidence.

    http://www.cdispatch.com/news/article.asp?aid=61094
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  2. #12
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    The Mississippi Supreme Court has granted Howard a new trial.

    https://courts.ms.gov/Images/Opinions/CO148586.pdf
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  3. #13
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    Man gets new trial after discredited bite-mark testimony

    JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a man on death row deserves a new trial in a 1992 killing because his conviction was based partially on a dentist’s bite-mark testimony that has been discredited.

    Eddie Lee Howard Jr., 67, is in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Attorneys from the Mississippi Innocence Project asked the justices to give him a new trial.

    Howard has been convicted multiple times of capital murder in the stabbing death of 84-year-old Georgia Kemp of Lowndes County. In Mississippi, capital murder is defined as a killing committed along with another felony. In this case, the other felony was rape.

    On Feb. 2, 1992, a neighbor saw smoke coming from Kemp’s house. Firefighters found a small blaze in the living room and then found Kemp’s body on her bedroom floor. Her legs were bloody, she was partially exposed, a bloody knife was on her bed and the telephone line had been cut, court records show.

    Howard was convicted of capital murder in 1994, when he represented himself at trial. That conviction was overturned in 1997.

    Howard was convicted again in 2000. During that trial, Dr. Michael West testified that bite marks on Kemp’s neck and arm were “consistent with” Howard’s teeth, and that a bite mark on her right breast was an “identical” match to Howard’s dental impressions. The dentist also testified that he had “no doubt” Howard left the mark, according to the Supreme Court ruling Thursday.

    West testified during that trial that he was a member of the American Board of Forensic Odontology and that he had followed the group’s guidelines as he compared the marks on Kemp’s body to Howard’s dental impressions that were made as part of the case.

    “But since Howard’s trial, the ABFO has revised those guidelines to prohibit such testimony, and this reflects a new scientific understanding that an individual perpetrator cannot be reliably identified through bite-mark comparison,” the justices wrote Thursday. “This, along with new DNA testing and the paucity of other evidence linking Howard to the murder, requires the Court to conclude that Howard is entitled to a new trial.”

    West had testified about bite marks in other cases that have been overturned, including the wrongful convictions of men in the rape and killing of two 3-year-old girls in Mississippi. Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer were later cleared, based on DNA evidence. Brooks was in prison for 16 years and Brewer was in prison for 13 years.

    West said in a 2012 deposition that he no longer believed in bite-mark evidence and it should not be used in court cases.

    https://www.wjtv.com/news/man-gets-n...ark-testimony/
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  4. #14
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Mississippi judge drops case for man who spent 23 years on death row

    UPI

    A Mississippi court has dropped the murder charges for a man who spent 23 years on death row for a conviction based on discredited bite-mark evidence.

    Eddie Lee Howard Jr., 67, had twice been convicted for the 1992 rape and murder of 87-year-old Georgia Kemp in Lowndes County. His 2000 conviction was based on testimony from dentists who said that marks on Kemp's body matched Howard's teeth.

    A Lowndes County Circuit Court judge signed an order dismissing the case Thursday, more than four months after the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Howard.

    Since Howard's original trial, the American Board of Forensic Odontology has revised its guidelines to prohibit dentists from testifying on bite-mark evidence and said such evidence isn't enough to reliably identify a perpetrator.

    The Mississippi Innocence Project, which worked on Howard's case, said he was one of four people convicted of capital murder based on the forensic work of Drs. Steven Hayne and Michael West. One of the others, Levon Brooks, was exonerated after serving several years of a life sentence in 2008.

    District Attorney Scott Colom said he had no choice but to seek to dismiss the case after the Mississippi Supreme Court's August ruling.

    "After reading the supreme court's opinion, reading the trial transcripts from the two trials, reviewing the investigative files and case files of the case, I decided that we didn't have even remotely close to sufficient evidence to convict Mr. Howard beyond a reasonable doubt," Colom said, according to The Dispatch in Columbus and Starkville, Miss.

    DNA evidence found at the scene of Kemp's death also couldn't be tied to Howard.

    Howard was released from prison in December on his own recognizance.

    https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2021...2281610154652/
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