Monday, October 19, 2015

FREEDOM FOR A PRISONER OF BAD SCIENCE

Steven Mark Chaney, imprisoned for 28 years for the 1987 slayings of two people in Dallas was released after his conviction based on now-discredited bite-mark analysis was overturned by State District Judge Dominique Collins

Editorial

The Dallas Morning News
October 14, 2015

Steven Mark Chaney emerged from 28 years behind bars after a Dallas County judge ruled Monday that junk science played a decisive – and clearly wrongful – role in winning his 1987 murder conviction. It marked not just a victory for Chaney but also for landmark 2013 legislation that made it easier for convicts to challenge the shenanigans that prosecutors resort to when their evidence is weak.

In Chaney’s trial, Dallas County prosecutors faced an uphill battle countering testimony by nine witnesses that they saw Chaney the day a Dallas couple, John and Sally Sweek, were slain in 1987. Prosecutors introduced the “expert” testimony of dentist Jim Hales and another forensic odontologist. They asserted that the scientific study of bite marks could determine with precision that indentations found on John Sweek’s arm could be traced directly to Chaney’s teeth. Hales was so confident, he declared that there was a “one to a million” chance that anyone other than Chaney bit Sweek’s arm.

His confidence, combined with some apparently manipulated evidence and other prosecutorial misconduct, were enough to sway the jury to convict. But Hales now says he was wrong based on findings by fellow scientists debunking bite-mark science. National studies have found that while evidence such as DNA and fingerprints are regarded as valid because they’ve held up under repeated, rigorous scientific challenges, bite-mark testing hasn’t been proven reliable.

The conclusion of Chaney’s challenge was so foregone that the judge went out beforehand and purchased a pie to give him upon his release Monday.

The path to Chaney’s victory was paved by landmark legislation passed in 2013 in the wake of high-profile exonerations, including that of Michael Morton, a Texan wrongfully convicted for the 1987 murder of his wife. SB 344, one of several bills signed into law that year, allows judges to overturn convictions that were based on forensic science later proven to be meritless.

Bite mark science joins a host of other questionable techniques, such as some arson forensics and police lineups using sniffer dogs to identify supposed perpetrators, that have undergone a through and welcome vetting by the Texas Forensic Science Commission. The review was prompted, in part, by the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham based on highly suspect arson science that linked Willingham to the deaths of his three daughters in Corsicana.

Chaney was wrongfully convicted. But he still faces an arduous process of filing for official designation as an exoneree, after which he could be eligible for up to $50,000 for every year he spent in prison. The state must waste no time processing this review and compensating Chaney for the freedom robbed from him by junk science.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Once the police advise you of your rights, Shut Up! I always laugh at the folks who think they are helping themselves by speaking to the police about a crime they are a suspect in. It does not help. The police will twist everything you say to suit their case against you, even the inflection of your voice when trying to make a point.

Once they put your manipulated statement into evidence along with junk science, you are toast.

Anonymous said...

One of the best lines I heard recently during an interview..."You want to be a witness or a defendant?"