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Bite Comparison Testimony

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In the late 1970s, notorious serial killer Ted Bundy was identified – and convicted – in part because of bite mark evidence. But others, convicted based on bite mark comparison testimony, have been set free. One of those exonerated was Roy Brown, who had been convicted of murder in New York in 1992. In 2007 he was able to leave prison. Although it was bite mark comparison testimony that helped convict Brown (Freeman, 2008), it was DNA testing of the saliva left on the victim’s skin that was found to match up with a different suspect. So what went wrong?
The testimony by the so-called bite mark expert was very important in Brown’s trial, and so was the hypothesis put forward by expert and accepted by the prosecutor. The bite mark on the victim

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