Mississippi Supreme Court Grants New Trial to Eddie Howard, Sentenced to Death by Junk Bite-Mark Evidence

The Mississippi Supreme Court has grant­ed a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Eddie Lee Howard, Jr. (pic­tured), find­ing that the com­bi­na­tion of sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly invalid bite-mark evi­dence used to con­vict him and new DNA evi­dence enti­tled him to a new tri­al in the 1992 mur­der and alleged rape of an 84-year-old white woman.

In an 8 – 1 deci­sion on August 27, 2020, the court held that the dis­cred­it­ed foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny, ​“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.”

Howard was first con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1994 in a tri­al in which he rep­re­sent­ed him­self. The Mississippi Supreme Court over­turned that con­vic­tion in 1997 and ordered a new tri­al. He was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death again in a retri­al in 2000 at which foren­sic odon­tol­o­gist Dr. Michael West tes­ti­fied that Howard was the source of bite marks he claimed to have found on the victim’s body dur­ing a post-autop­sy, post-exhuma­tion exam­i­na­tion of her body. Forensic pathol­o­gist Dr. Steven Hayne con­duct­ed the autop­sy in the case and claimed that the vic­tim had been beat­en, stran­gled, stabbed, and raped. His ini­tial autop­sy report did not men­tion bite marks.

Represented by lawyers from the Mississippi Innocence Project and the nation­al Innocence Project, Howard pre­sent­ed DNA evi­dence dur­ing post-con­vic­tion evi­den­tiary hear­ings in 2016. The DNA test­ing found no evi­dence of semen or male DNA on the victim’s cloth­ing, bed­sheets, or body and no male DNA on the loca­tions on the victim’s body where she sup­pos­ed­ly had been bit­ten. None of the blood or oth­er items test­ed con­tained Howard’s DNA. Male DNA found on the knife used by the mur­der­er exclud­ed Howard as the source. Nonetheless, the tri­al court upheld Howard’s conviction.

The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed. The court wrote that the type of bite-mark iden­ti­fi­ca­tion tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en by Dr. West in this case would be pro­hib­it­ed under recent­ly revised American Board of Forensic Odontology (ABFO) guide­lines ​“reflect[ing] a new sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing that an indi­vid­ual per­pe­tra­tor can­not be reli­ably iden­ti­fied through bite-mark com­par­i­son.” Without that tes­ti­mo­ny, which the court said was cen­tral to the prosecution’s case, the remain­ing evi­dence was insuf­fi­cient to sus­tain Howard’s conviction.

The inno­cence projects hailed the court’s rul­ing. ​“Mr. Howard has been in prison for almost thir­ty years, almost all of that time on death row, slat­ed to be exe­cut­ed,” Mississippi Innocence Project direc­tor Tucker Carrington said in a joint state­ment issued by the inno­cence projects on August 28. ​“It’s now time to bring this case to an end — and to close anoth­er door on a dis­as­trous era of injus­tice in this state.”

In his tes­ti­mo­ny, West told the jury that bite marks on the victim’s neck and arm were ​“con­sis­tent with” Howard’s teeth and that anoth­er bite mark on her right breast was ​“iden­ti­cal” to Howard’s den­tal impres­sions. He fur­ther tes­ti­fied that he had ​“no doubt” Howard had caused that bite mark.

Bitemark-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion claims such as those made by West were the sub­ject of blis­ter­ing crit­i­cism by the National Academies of Science in their land­mark 2009 report, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward. The report exposed the field of foren­sic odon­tol­ogy as lack­ing any ​“evi­dence of an exist­ing sci­en­tif­ic basis for iden­ti­fy­ing an indi­vid­ual to the exclu­sion of all oth­ers” and ​“lack[ing] valid evi­dence to sup­port many of the assump­tions made by foren­sic den­tists dur­ing bite mark com­par­isons.” The ABFO guide­lines grad­u­al­ly backed off per­mit­ting bitemark iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, even­tu­al­ly pro­hibit­ing them in 2018.

Earlier that year, Carrington and Washington Post colum­nist Radley Balko exposed the broad impact of junk sci­ence tes­ti­mo­ny from Hayne and West in tri­als in Mississippi and else­where in the South in their book The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist. According to the inno­cence projects, Howard was the fourth per­son con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der in Mississippi based upon their foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. In 2008, the Innocence Project exon­er­at­ed death-row pris­on­er Kennedy Brewer and his co-defen­dant Levon Brooks, who had been sen­tenced to life, after DNA test­ing exclud­ed them and iden­ti­fied the actual killer.

After a 2016 depo­si­tion left West’s tes­ti­mo­ny in sham­bles, the Mississippi Innocence Project sent a let­ter to the Mississippi Attorney General’s office ask­ing that the charges against Howard be dropped. Instead, state pros­e­cu­tors retal­i­at­ed by fil­ing a motion seek­ing to remove Howard’s lawyers from the case. The Mississippi Supreme Court inter­vened, chang­ing the state court rule on which the attor­ney general’s office had based its motion.

Prosecutors suc­cess­ful­ly fought efforts to over­turn Howard’s con­vic­tion in the tri­al court and argued on appeal that Howard’s con­vic­tion should be upheld, notwith­stand­ing the false foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny and new DNA evi­dence because Howard had made an incrim­i­nat­ing state­ment to a police detec­tive. The Mississippi Supreme Court agreed that Howard’s alleged state­ment that ​“the case is solved“ and admit­ting he ​“had a tem­per and that’s why this hap­pened” was ​“pecu­liar and sus­pi­cious.” However, the court not­ed, the state­ment con­tained no details about the crime, had not been record­ed, no one else had heard it, and the detec­tive did not sub­se­quent­ly ask Howard to put in writ­ing. Viewed in the con­text of all of the new evi­dence, the court said, the state­ment did ​“not amount to a confession.”

The inno­cence projects said the Mississippi Supreme Court’s deci­sion made Howard the 34^th per­son ​“wrong­ful­ly-accused and con­vict­ed based on the pseu­do-sci­ence of bite mark match­ing tes­ti­mo­ny.” The 33^rd was for­mer Florida death-row pris­on­er, Robert DuBoise, who was freed August 27, 2020.