In recent years there has been a lot of evidence that much of what we rely on, to prosecute people, does not really hold up to scientific scrutiny. Apparently, not even fingerprints and certain kinds of DNA are as certain as we once believed, according to scientists. They have however said that nothing is less certain than bite marks and a recent Texas Commission has looked into bite marks and investigated the situation. Their full report is only expected to be released in February 2016, but it has already allowed some people to be set free from jail, after the dental experts in most cases have accepted that the so-called experts were wrong. 

In the cases involved, the prisoners were convicted solely on the basis ultimately of bite marks, because none of the other evidence was good enough. The experts have subsequently said that because of the malleability of human skin, the same teeth actually leave different marking patterns on somebody with each bite – there is nothing consistent about somebody’s bite on human skin. Leading forensic dentists, when given photographs of skin wounds, apparently could not even agree, in many cases, as to whether or not marks were even caused by a bite. It makes one always appreciate that what we regard today as certain and as science is so often overturned later. 

When I was a young candidate attorney I was sent by my principal to a man who was often quoted in the media as an expert on forensic science in South Africa, in particular with regard to criminal matters. His job was to say whether a tape recording of a call was authentic and I must say I thought the process was laughably amateur. He put the tape into a normal tape recorder and listened to it and simply because there were not any obviously edited parts to it, or pauses, he said that in his opinion the recording was genuine. There was no actual expert analysis of the tape – no rendering it through computer systems and detailed analysis – it was just his “trained expert” ear. I am sure that the tape recording was genuine, but I don’t think his process was scientific and every time I read his name in the newspaper, giving an opinion on some or other topic, in criminal matters, I wonder if the issue has been as glossily brushed over, as the tape recording of the phone call, I saw him handle.