Speaker 1: On February second, neighbors noticed smoke emanating from the Columbus,
Speaker 1: Mississippi home of eighty four year old Georgia Kemp and
Speaker 1: called one firefighters found her body brutally stabbed to death
Speaker 1: with a butcher knife. During the autopsy, doctor Stephen Hayne
Speaker 1: observed vaginal injuries, but a rape kit yielded no seminal
Speaker 1: or blood evidence. When the investigation struggled, a local man
Speaker 1: with a record, Eddie Lee Howard was identified as a
Speaker 1: potential suspect. The body had already been thoroughly autopsy dan
Speaker 1: buried without embalming fluid when doctor Hayne had a sudden
Speaker 1: realization that bite marks may have been present, prompting the
Speaker 1: body to be zoomed and sent for examination by now
Speaker 1: infamous and discredited bite mark evidence Charlottan Michael West. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, molds were made of Eddie Lee Howard's dentures
Speaker 1: for comparison. This notorious fraudster had developed a process that
Speaker 1: he called, to quote the West phenomenon, which involved special
Speaker 1: glasses and ultra violet lights that allowed him and only
Speaker 1: him to see injuries that were totally invisible to the
Speaker 1: naked eye. Injuries that he ruled were bite marks that
Speaker 1: he could then match to the dental molds of the accused.
Speaker 1: No photographic evidence of these alleged bite marks ever existed,
Speaker 1: yet his testimony was enough to sentence Eddie Lee Howard
Speaker 1: to death. Countless innocent men and women are currently wrongfully
Speaker 1: imprisoned based on this same junk science, while courts across
Speaker 1: our country continue to admit it as evidence to this
Speaker 1: very day. This is wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom. That's me, of course,
Speaker 1: I'm your host, and today's episode each is a man
Speaker 1: who's been in prison since Lyndon Johnson was president, a
Speaker 1: corrupt d A, a corrupt medical examiner, and incompetent Charlotte
Speaker 1: and who passed himself off as a forensic dentist, a
Speaker 1: man who was basically compelled to service his own attorney,
Speaker 1: and more than one trial. I mean, and I haven't
Speaker 1: even scratched the surface yet. But before we go any further,
Speaker 1: we have as good of a panel of guests today
Speaker 1: as I could ever dream up. First of all, we
Speaker 1: have someone who you recognize, Chris Fabricat. Chris has been
Speaker 1: a frequent guest, not only on this show, but also
Speaker 1: on the recent episode of Junk Science. Chris is the
Speaker 1: Joseph flam Special Counsel to the Innocence Project, also known
Speaker 1: as the Strategic Litigation Director. So he's got a lot
Speaker 1: of fancy titles, but none of them are fancy enough
Speaker 1: to describe the amazing work that he does day in
Speaker 1: and day out. So Chris, welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
Speaker 1: A pleasure Jason. With him, we have for the first
Speaker 1: time a gentleman who's known to basically everyone in this field,
Speaker 1: Executive director of the Mississippi Innocence Project, Tucker Carrington. So
Speaker 1: great to have you here, Welcome to the show. Thanks you,
Speaker 1: it's nice to be here. And another name our listeners
Speaker 1: will recognize is, if not from his writing, then from
Speaker 1: having been on our show before. John Chrisham, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Wrongful Conviction. Hello, Jason, happy to be here. And
Speaker 1: for those in the audience who don't know this, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't, John was a defense attorney
Speaker 1: before he even began his writing career, and he goes
Speaker 1: way back with not only the Mississippi Innocance Project, but
Speaker 1: also with Tucker and this particular case. My involvement goes
Speaker 1: back to Tucker. About fifteen years ago. We started the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project at the Old Miss Law School where I
Speaker 1: went to school, and we hired Tucker to be our
Speaker 1: executive director. And oddly enough, my son went to Ole
Speaker 1: Miss Law School in two thousand seven and he got
Speaker 1: into Tucker's clinical program, and Tucker assigned him Eddie Lee's case.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand and eight, and my son went
Speaker 1: to Parchment to death Row, a place I've been too
Speaker 1: many times, and he met Mr Howard interviewed him several times.
Speaker 1: And that's when I first learned of Eddie Lee's case
Speaker 1: and the facts surrounding it. And and by the end though,
Speaker 1: we were just sort of accustomed to reading another crazy
Speaker 1: case involving Dr Hanging, Dr West and Eddie Lee Howard
Speaker 1: was imprisoned from sixty eight, almost every day of his
Speaker 1: life until late two thousand twenty. And I want to
Speaker 1: go back in time to how the system failed Eddie
Speaker 1: Lee Howard from the very beginning. I'll get us up
Speaker 1: to the bid nine nineties, just on the cusp of
Speaker 1: the incident that we're gonna end up talking about here,
Speaker 1: but in essence, you're correct, Jason Mr. Howard was incarcerated
Speaker 1: for most of his adult life. He was out off
Speaker 1: and on. He came from difficult circumstances in east central Mississippi.
Speaker 1: He was really never out of prison for any appreciable
Speaker 1: amount of time until the early nine nineties. He also
Speaker 1: has an outside personality. He's notwithstanding the fact that he
Speaker 1: didn't receive much of an education, obviously, he's a very
Speaker 1: very smart person, worldly sort of in his own way,
Speaker 1: and talks a lot. He's a presence. So he was,
Speaker 1: you know, by virtue of having been incarcerated for most
Speaker 1: of his life, was at best on the periphery of
Speaker 1: any sort of law enforcement radar. Had something gone wrong
Speaker 1: in his neighborhood, Chris, take us back to February second.
Speaker 1: This is when four year old Georgia Kemp was murdered
Speaker 1: in her home. You know, it really began with a
Speaker 1: fire that was spotted by a young girl passing by
Speaker 1: miss Kemp's house that evening, and she went back home
Speaker 1: and they called the fire department, who came between eight
Speaker 1: and nine o'clock and went into the house and found
Speaker 1: smoldering fire and Miss Kemp laying faced down in a
Speaker 1: state of undressed that suggests that she'd been sexually assaulted
Speaker 1: and stabbed to death. There was a phone cord that
Speaker 1: had been cut from the wall, and there was nothing
Speaker 1: missing from the house. There was really no puntable items
Speaker 1: of much value. She had no known enemies. It seemed
Speaker 1: all evidence pointed to essentially a random attack. No fingerprints,
Speaker 1: there was no eyewitnesses, nobody had seen anything. Nobody had
Speaker 1: heard anything. Miss Kemp did not have many friends or family,
Speaker 1: and there were really no suspects. And when the miss
Speaker 1: Kemp remains were taken to the morgue and examined, the
Speaker 1: entire body was mapped by photographs and diagrams, and every cut,
Speaker 1: every scrape was noted, both in photographs and in the
Speaker 1: autopsy reports. After all that was documented, the victims remains
Speaker 1: were thoroughly autopsied. Ther rib cage was removed, all of
Speaker 1: her internal organs were removed, her neck was dissected, her
Speaker 1: brain removed from her skull, All the internal organs were
Speaker 1: weighed and measured, and then the remains were interred without
Speaker 1: embalming fluid, so they would have been rapidly decomposing, particularly
Speaker 1: with an elderly woman who had been so thoroughly atop
Speaker 1: seed and then during the courts of the investigation, you know,
Speaker 1: and as Tucker was saying, you know, what police did
Speaker 1: was beginning rounding up their usual suspects, you know, in
Speaker 1: a place like Mississippi, particularly at that time. But I
Speaker 1: would hasten to say probably today too, a vulnerable white
Speaker 1: woman rabbished by a black male with a criminal record
Speaker 1: is a familiar narrative in that part of the state.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly why they alighted on Mr Howard, not
Speaker 1: because there was any particular evidence pointing toward him, but
Speaker 1: because he had said a couple of vaguely incriminating things
Speaker 1: to police officers that were investigating the case. But what
Speaker 1: was interesting too is that there were also statements that
Speaker 1: really never became part of the trial at work sculptory
Speaker 1: that it pointed toward an alibi that Mr Howard had,
Speaker 1: and these were essentially ignored, And what became the chief
Speaker 1: item of evidence, at least in terms of the investigation,
Speaker 1: was these kind of vague statements that Mr Howard had made.
Speaker 1: One was that you know that I had a temper
Speaker 1: and that's why this had happened. And he had also
Speaker 1: said to police that the cases solved, and went on
Speaker 1: to say that they should continue investigating and that it
Speaker 1: had been committed by you know, multiple people, and that
Speaker 1: they were still out there. So these were the best confusing, vague,
Speaker 1: mildly suspicious statements, but it was enough for Columbus police
Speaker 1: to focus in on Natie Lee Howard. And the problem
Speaker 1: really was that they didn't have any evidence, and so
Speaker 1: they went back to the mortuary where ms Kemp's remains
Speaker 1: had been autop seed and I didn't know at that time, apparently,
Speaker 1: but that the victims remains had already been buried, and
Speaker 1: they decided at that point to disinter the remains. And
Speaker 1: what was interest sting, you know, is that at trial,
Speaker 1: the pathologists had testified that they were disinterred because there
Speaker 1: was some indication that there was injury made by teeth marks.
Speaker 1: But there was nowhere anywhere in the autopsy report, or
Speaker 1: in the photograph or anything else that ever suggested that
Speaker 1: any teeth marks had been left on the victim's body.
Speaker 1: And moreover, the victim's body had been autopsy within hours
Speaker 1: of her death, so any kind of bite marks that
Speaker 1: have been inflicted at the time of the crime plainly
Speaker 1: would have been visible at the time of the autopsy,
Speaker 1: and yet they were not. Nonetheless, the victims remains were
Speaker 1: disinterred and brought back to the ranking county Morgue. And
Speaker 1: this happened in It was a period of time in
Speaker 1: Mississippi where Dr Haines the pathologist, and Dr West, the
Speaker 1: small town dentist from Hattiesburg, Mississippi who decided to become
Speaker 1: an expert in many fields. These gangs were sort of
Speaker 1: tag teaming away through the criminal justice system in Mississippi
Speaker 1: and putting together an amazing string of convictions for prosecutors
Speaker 1: who realized that these guys would say pretty much whatever
Speaker 1: they wanted them to say to conform to their theory
Speaker 1: of guilt. And they did this time and time again.
Speaker 1: Haine would get the autopsy because at the time the
Speaker 1: state did not have a state medical examiner. That's been
Speaker 1: a problem there for forty years, and Haine was one
Speaker 1: of the few doctors who would agree to do autopsies.
Speaker 1: He once boasted of performing two thousand autopsies a year,
Speaker 1: and he would run through the autopsy real quick, and
Speaker 1: if it was a murder case, and he would get
Speaker 1: with the prosecutor and they would concoct some theory of
Speaker 1: guilt and and put the case together. And that's what
Speaker 1: happened here. As Chris said that, you know, after the
Speaker 1: autopsy there were there were no visible signs of bite marks,
Speaker 1: but suddenly there were, or maybe there were. So they
Speaker 1: dug up the body and they looked at it again
Speaker 1: and called him Dr West the dentist, as he so
Speaker 1: often did. West had this theory that during the type
Speaker 1: of sexual assault, there was a lot of biting going on,
Speaker 1: so thus the teeth marks, and West had the special
Speaker 1: ultra violet light that only he could operate, and he
Speaker 1: examined the body of Mrs Kemp and Low and behold,
Speaker 1: he found some teeth marks. So Haim calls in West,
Speaker 1: as he had done in other cases, to work his
Speaker 1: particular form of bullshit, something that he referred to as
Speaker 1: the West phenomenon. And Chris, can you explain what that is?
Speaker 1: The West phenomenon? Essentially, it's ultra violet lights using you know,
Speaker 1: fancy yellow goggles. Ultra Violet light penetrates beneath the skin,
Speaker 1: and that you can get images that are invisible to
Speaker 1: naked eye on skin. So that piece in and of
Speaker 1: itself is not utter nonsense. But what you can see
Speaker 1: that's invisible is a healing wound because on the surface
Speaker 1: level it appears to have been healed, but there's still
Speaker 1: injuries so that you can be viewed using UV light.
Speaker 1: So if you use ultra violet light on dead body,
Speaker 1: particularly post autopsy body or something like that, you're going
Speaker 1: to find all kinds of artifacts from all kinds of
Speaker 1: instruments that may have created injuries or bruises or what
Speaker 1: have you, and there's really no way to interpret them.
Speaker 1: There's no way to say when they were inflicted, or
Speaker 1: how they were inflicted, or how much they've changed from
Speaker 1: the first time that they were inflicted. And so when
Speaker 1: Dr West testified in this case and in virtually all
Speaker 1: those cases, that he would claim that the bite marks
Speaker 1: not only were they inflicted by the defendant, indeed and
Speaker 1: without doubt to the exclusion of everybody else on the planet,
Speaker 1: but he would say that it was done at the
Speaker 1: time of the murder. Right, so you have the defendant
Speaker 1: in violent contact with the decedent at the time of
Speaker 1: the crime, which is essentially a directed verdict if you
Speaker 1: buy the testimony. So here the use of UV light
Speaker 1: was particularly outrageous because this wound would have plainly been
Speaker 1: visible at the time, right because al Gayson was that
Speaker 1: had been created only a few hours earlier. Right, So
Speaker 1: that doesn't become invisible and start healing, it disappear in
Speaker 1: time to find you know this in the UV light,
Speaker 1: it certainly doesn't happen and in a post autopsy, post
Speaker 1: disinterment scenario. So the UV light was very useful because
Speaker 1: it allowed the surfacing of images that could really be
Speaker 1: anything and allowed Dr West and he's not alone and
Speaker 1: using this technique in terms of bite mark experts. But
Speaker 1: at the bottom is that you just you surface artifacts
Speaker 1: and then you can interpret them using your quote unquote
Speaker 1: training and experience, having seen so many of these cases
Speaker 1: to say that, yeah, that was a bite mark, and
Speaker 1: I was able to match this to the defendant, to
Speaker 1: Susan everybody else. And so you got Mr Howard and
Speaker 1: they talked him into yielding an implant from his teeth
Speaker 1: and said there's a there's a match. But then it's
Speaker 1: even weirder than that because Mr Howard had fucking dentures.
Speaker 1: This could be a punch line and at but there's
Speaker 1: nothing funny about it. I appreciate you're saying it's tragic,
Speaker 1: because it these cases really are. I mean, there's you know,
Speaker 1: Eddie Lee Howard's trial did not happen in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: Bite mark matching testimony was sort of in its infancy
Speaker 1: stages nationally, but one of its leading proponents was Mike West,
Speaker 1: and he was really beginning to make a name for
Speaker 1: himself both nationally but particularly within Mississippi and in certain
Speaker 1: pockets of Mississippi, and this jurisdiction that included Mounds County,
Speaker 1: where Mr. Howard's trial was was one of them. Because
Speaker 1: this happened in another case, another wrongful conviction from the
Speaker 1: very same area of the country that the Innocence Project
Speaker 1: in New York to people who want on this podcast
Speaker 1: but who were deeply involved in this case, Vanessa Potkin
Speaker 1: and Peter Neufeld in two thousand, seventy thousand and eight
Speaker 1: exonerated two gentlemen, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, also convicted
Speaker 1: on the same bogus bite mark testimony. There was another case,
Speaker 1: Sherwood Brown, where Mike West had just finished testifying. Dr
Speaker 1: West had just finished testifying in a case where he
Speaker 1: matched bite marks to a Bologny Sandwich to help convict somebody.
Speaker 1: So these cases are sort of all of a piece,
Speaker 1: and the prosecutor forest allgood in this particular case. But
Speaker 1: prosecutors who were using West were having real success. They
Speaker 1: were getting convictions, they were getting death sentences, and so
Speaker 1: dr wests involvement in Mr Howard's investigation and trial at
Speaker 1: this point is not an anomaly. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: well known, time tested recipe. The Pacers Foundation is a
Speaker 1: proud supporter of this episode of Ronval Conviction with Jason
Speaker 1: Flam and of the Last Mild organization, which provides business
Speaker 1: and tech training to help incarcerated individuals successfully and permanently
Speaker 1: re enter the workforce. The Pacers Foundation is committed to
Speaker 1: improving the lives of Hoosiers across Indiana, supporting organizations that
Speaker 1: are dedicated primarily to helping young people and students. For
Speaker 1: more information on the work of the Pacers Foundation or
Speaker 1: the Last Mile Program, please visit Pacers Foundation dot org
Speaker 1: or the Last Mile dot org. Mr Howard's innocent. He
Speaker 1: wants to go to trial. He's had a series of
Speaker 1: lawyers that one of them had come in he had quit,
Speaker 1: another had come in hadn't filed any emotions on the
Speaker 1: eve of trial except for emotion to continue, hadn't challenged
Speaker 1: the bite mark evidence. And Mr Howard is, you know,
Speaker 1: we've mentioned a couple times already. It's a smart guy,
Speaker 1: he's a late person, but he knows they're not ready
Speaker 1: for trial. And so the judge says, essentially, well, if
Speaker 1: you really want another lawyer, I can do that. But
Speaker 1: you know it's going to take another lawyer who knows
Speaker 1: how long to get up to speed on the case.
Speaker 1: And so Mr Howard says, I'll represent myself then, and
Speaker 1: that goes about as well as most people who represent themselves,
Speaker 1: pro say, particularly complicated cases. And he gets convicted slash
Speaker 1: sentenced as well to death and his first trial representing himself.
Speaker 1: So the trial is may of the case that the
Speaker 1: state put on was what exactly because they had basically nothing.
Speaker 1: Can you give us an overview of that trial? In
Speaker 1: some the state's case was that the victim's body MS
Speaker 1: Kim's body was found as a result of an arson
Speaker 1: or what looked to be an arson that was supposed
Speaker 1: to cover up the murder, and Eddie Lee Howard lived
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. He had made some odd statement Chris
Speaker 1: talked about earlier. The state's almost exclusive evidence against Mr
Speaker 1: Howard was Dr Hayne talking about the autopsy, and then
Speaker 1: Dr West by far and away. At one point I
Speaker 1: knew I'd counted up the transcript pages, but the vast
Speaker 1: bulk of the transcript pages from both of Mr Howard's
Speaker 1: trials are Mike West testimony. Yeah, and I would say
Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority of Mike West testimony is really about
Speaker 1: his credentials. You know, all the boards he sat on,
Speaker 1: all the honors he had gotten every time the American
Speaker 1: Academy of Forensic Sciences sent him to China as an ambassador,
Speaker 1: the discovery of the West phenomenon, the literature, the research grants,
Speaker 1: that he had been given the FBI training, that he
Speaker 1: had done, that he had been to Scotland Yard and
Speaker 1: lectured them about bite marks. The credentials themselves are so persuasive.
Speaker 1: Coupled with West's folksy charm and kind of you know,
Speaker 1: a local kid made good, all that is potent sneak oil.
Speaker 1: Let's not leave about the fact that the bite mark
Speaker 1: quote unquote evidence didn't actually exist anywhere except for in
Speaker 1: West's twisted brain. Right, because there were no photographs ever
Speaker 1: taken or presented of these alleged mysterious bite marks that
Speaker 1: only turned up four days after she was dead and disinterred.
Speaker 1: You know, he testified without an exhibit at all. Right,
Speaker 1: He just got on the witness stand with his folksy
Speaker 1: charm and persuaded twelve jurors that he saw three different
Speaker 1: bite marks, all of them he matched to Eddie Lee Howard.
Speaker 1: The one on the victim's neck in particular, and the
Speaker 1: one on the victim's breast were Eddie Lee Howard, to
Speaker 1: the exclusion of all of the potential sources. And the
Speaker 1: neck where Dr West claimed to have found this bite
Speaker 1: mark that he matched to Eddie Lee Howard's dentures had
Speaker 1: been dissected during the autopsy, right, and he claimed to
Speaker 1: be able to manipulate the neck during his examination to
Speaker 1: show the exact way that had been flexing when Eddie
Speaker 1: Lee Howard allegedly bit down on it. West was never
Speaker 1: even asked how is that even possible? Right, he was
Speaker 1: never even asked to see a photograph. It's really an
Speaker 1: astonishing lack of evidence and just astonishing claims that were
Speaker 1: allowed in without objection. Yeah, I mean, not to be gross,
Speaker 1: but she really wouldn't have even had a neck at
Speaker 1: this point in time, after all the things that her
Speaker 1: body had gone through during the examination post mortem, just
Speaker 1: for the edification of our audience. Courts just rely on precedence.
Speaker 1: So if something was allowed in a court, doesn't matter
Speaker 1: how long ago, then a judge will say, well, it
Speaker 1: was allowed another time, so allow it now. There's no
Speaker 1: objective analysis of the validity of the science. It's just well,
Speaker 1: somebody else said it was okay, so it's okay with
Speaker 1: me too. It's just something everyone should be aware of
Speaker 1: because it is absolutely asked backwards. And so May twelve
Speaker 1: a day that will an infamy. Eddie Lee Howard was
Speaker 1: convicted and sentenced to death, so he appealed because he
Speaker 1: was in fact unfit to represent himself in court. And
Speaker 1: John the Mississippi Supreme Court gets involved, right, which is
Speaker 1: not a common thing. Right that they actually saw fit
Speaker 1: in nineties seven, to overturn his original conviction, right or
Speaker 1: to order a new trial. Well, he tell him, the
Speaker 1: Mississippi Supremes reverse a conviction. You know, it's we all
Speaker 1: stop and take a hard look because it doesn't have
Speaker 1: very often and The new trial happened in two thousand
Speaker 1: and the state now presented a new witness, Eddie's ex girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Cafe and Folgum, where they sort of dragged her into this,
Speaker 1: who testified that Eddie bit her occasionally during sex and
Speaker 1: that he smelled like smoke the day after the murder.
Speaker 1: By the way, she had not previously reported that alleged
Speaker 1: smell during her initial interview. So this, this doesn't smell good,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and all good get ready for this.
Speaker 1: He's quote unquote the progress of mankind has been carried
Speaker 1: forward on the backs of people like Michael West. That's
Speaker 1: not enough. He goes on to say, back to quote,
Speaker 1: the Church threatened to burn Copernicus because he dared to
Speaker 1: say that the planets didn't revolve around the Earth. So
Speaker 1: it was with Michael West end quote. So I forget
Speaker 1: the fact that he confused Copernicus and Galileo, because that's
Speaker 1: far from the most ridiculous portion of this outburst. But
Speaker 1: Eddie was again convicted and sentenced to death. Kind of astonishing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an astonishing claim to make at that
Speaker 1: point in time, especially because they're already was plenty of
Speaker 1: evidence that, in fact, Dr West was not anything approaching
Speaker 1: what all Good was arguing, you know, because he had
Speaker 1: been already creating problems for himself. He was going to
Speaker 1: be suspended from the American border, Forensico to ontology had
Speaker 1: to be reinstated. Their national article was about him already,
Speaker 1: I think, in Newsweek, National Law Journal. So if you
Speaker 1: were paying attention, this was a bold claim to begin with,
Speaker 1: and it was also one that was really starting to
Speaker 1: swim upstream against empirical data that was starting to creep in.
Speaker 1: Even then, there's developments in two thousand one, two thousand six,
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, Eddie was ultimately excluded from every piece
Speaker 1: of evidence that was tested for his DNA, including the
Speaker 1: male DNA and blood found on the butcher knife, and
Speaker 1: the testing also undermined West's theory if it was even
Speaker 1: a theory that camp had been bitten. No male DNA
Speaker 1: or saliva was proven to be found on the nightgown
Speaker 1: in the areas that would have common contact with the
Speaker 1: teeth in the areas that had allegedly been bitten. So
Speaker 1: basically all of it was a combination of lies, nonsense,
Speaker 1: and junk science. And two thousand fifteen, the Lounge County
Speaker 1: Circuit Court ruled the DNA evidence wouldn't change the outcome
Speaker 1: of trial, which I find too crazy for even me.
Speaker 1: You know, this same judge presided over all of the
Speaker 1: evidence that we've been discussing around the Eddie Lee Howard
Speaker 1: case over the course of two years in Lownes County, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: same place where Eddie Lee Howard was convicted. There was
Speaker 1: evidence about the National Academy of Sciences findings on bite
Speaker 1: mark evidence. There was testimony about Michael West's dramatic fall
Speaker 1: from grace and the forensic science community. There was a
Speaker 1: new scientific research based on bite marks that were created
Speaker 1: in condaver skin that showed that skin cannot record a
Speaker 1: bite mark no matter what, you can't associate it with
Speaker 1: the teeth that known to have made these bite marks.
Speaker 1: There was testimony by now a judge in California who
Speaker 1: was a defense attorney at the time, who burned Michael
Speaker 1: West in a blind sting and West match teeth to
Speaker 1: a bite mark that were known not to have made
Speaker 1: it very persuasively. Moreover, videotape of that was played in
Speaker 1: open court. All that was presented before the court, none
Speaker 1: of it was sufficiently persuasive. To overturn the conviction. It's
Speaker 1: unfun and really, you know, and the blind the blind test,
Speaker 1: I'd read about that it's an investigators submitted his own
Speaker 1: teeth marks as a potential culprit in this particular case,
Speaker 1: and the genius Dr West concluded without any doubt whatsoever
Speaker 1: that this was in fact the perfect match. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's been exposed, re exposed, and yet you know, here
Speaker 1: we are, and is he still practicing? By the way,
Speaker 1: you know, the really repulsive irony Dr West's career is
Speaker 1: that he's wound up as a prison dentist. One of
Speaker 1: the things about the Ellingly Howard case, which is fascinating
Speaker 1: is it kind of offers a snapshot of some of
Speaker 1: the friends that reformed that Chris and the Innocence Project
Speaker 1: had been working on, because in two thousand nine, two
Speaker 1: thousand ten, when we first filed for post conviction relief
Speaker 1: in Annie the Howard's case, there were really only a
Speaker 1: handful of exonerations involving bite marks, you know that that
Speaker 1: we were just sort of beginning to realize that this
Speaker 1: was junk. Two of them, of course, we're Levon Brooks
Speaker 1: and Kennedy Brewer's case, which the Innocence Project had done
Speaker 1: just a couple of years prior, and in the span
Speaker 1: of the years between two thousand nine or ten up
Speaker 1: until two thousand twenty, thanks to Chris and the folks
Speaker 1: in the forensic unit at the Innocence Project and others,
Speaker 1: we were looking at two dozen exonerations based on fraudulent
Speaker 1: bite mark evidence. So the landscape had really changed significantly.
Speaker 1: But by the time we filed our final sort of
Speaker 1: petition in the Mississippi Supreme Court in twenty nineteen, I
Speaker 1: guess so much water had passed under the bridge that
Speaker 1: it was just manifestly obvious in our minds. And of
Speaker 1: course we prevailed that this was a conviction that could
Speaker 1: not stand, and the Mississippi Supreme Court went even a
Speaker 1: bit further in their opinion, reversing and vacating the conviction
Speaker 1: by saying, look, there's really no there's really no evidence here.
Speaker 1: There's really no evidence to retry Mr Howard. August thirty one,
Speaker 1: just a short time ago, when the Mississippi Supreme Court
Speaker 1: finally vacated the murder conviction and death sentence, Justice Kitchens
Speaker 1: ruled that Mississippi shouldn't uphold the conviction at death sentence
Speaker 1: based on the testimony of a proven unreliable witness, of
Speaker 1: course Dr West's we're talking about, and the d A
Speaker 1: had to decide whether or not he would pursue a
Speaker 1: new trial. So we finally got the news we had
Speaker 1: all been waiting for and you guys have been working for,
Speaker 1: and he was finally free. But where is the case now,
Speaker 1: because the state still has the option to retry, and right, yes,
Speaker 1: the conviction and sentence have been vacated, So it's back
Speaker 1: in the Circuit court in a what I think is
Speaker 1: a nod to the Supreme Court's opinion to some of
Speaker 1: the things that Supreme Court said in addition to vacating
Speaker 1: the conviction in the sentence is the paucity basically there's
Speaker 1: no evidence to really retry this case. The Court, upon
Speaker 1: motion really of both parties, the defense and the prosecutor,
Speaker 1: release Mr Howard on bond while the state makes an
Speaker 1: ultimate determination about whether it's going to proceed with this
Speaker 1: matter or not. Add that, Eddielee Howard will certainly have
Speaker 1: competent counsel if there's ever another trial, right so amen
Speaker 1: to that, And so Eddie Lee Howard is free. And
Speaker 1: that brings us to closing arguments, where first I thank
Speaker 1: each of you for joining me and us here today,
Speaker 1: and then I simply kick back in my chair, turn
Speaker 1: off my microphone, leave my headphones on, and just listen
Speaker 1: and learn from whatever you have to say. And if
Speaker 1: you have a memory of Eddie's freedom that you'd like
Speaker 1: to share, No pressure, but that would be extra great.
Speaker 1: So let's start with Chris Tucker and then John. One
Speaker 1: thing that Tucker and I talked about before Mr Howard
Speaker 1: was released is changes that we had seen in clients
Speaker 1: that had been incarcerated for many, many years wrongfully, and
Speaker 1: that we meet clients like that in prison, and like,
Speaker 1: because we're human, we we make judgments about intellectual capacity,
Speaker 1: about who they are as people, about their ability to
Speaker 1: survive on the outside should we get the exoneration, and
Speaker 1: the change that will overcome a person upon being exonerated
Speaker 1: and released is one of the most profound things that
Speaker 1: I've experienced that I've been fortunate to experience. At the
Speaker 1: Innocence Project. We had formed a picture of a deeply damaged,
Speaker 1: institutionalized person that was going to have real trouble navigating
Speaker 1: just data a life outside. But what's remarkable is just
Speaker 1: how cogent, how happy, how on point Mr Howard is today.
Speaker 1: It's overwhelming the difference, and it just shows how deeply
Speaker 1: damaging wrongful incarceration, or any incarceration, particularly for long periods
Speaker 1: of time in a place like Parchment is to a
Speaker 1: human being, to their soul, to their ability to relate
Speaker 1: to their fellow man. And to watch that cloud lifted
Speaker 1: and the shackles, you know, literally come off, it's just incredible. Tucker,
Speaker 1: go ahead. I've really been amazed and thankful to witness
Speaker 1: the kindness is that so many people have done for
Speaker 1: us and Mr Howard upon his release, trying their level
Speaker 1: best to make his transition successful. And these are people,
Speaker 1: by the way, some of whom you know are on
Speaker 1: our team social workers for instance, but many of whom
Speaker 1: are not. They owe us no obligation whatsoever. Helping find housing,
Speaker 1: people have donated clothing, furniture. It's it's just remarkable, this
Speaker 1: community that has all of a sudden popped up and
Speaker 1: built itself around him and tried to hold him up
Speaker 1: as he begins. What Chris said, you know, it is
Speaker 1: going to be a very very difficult transition after all
Speaker 1: this time, John, when you when you read these cases,
Speaker 1: case after case after case of just the bad junk science.
Speaker 1: It's not just bite mark, it's arson bootmark, it's tire print,
Speaker 1: it's blood spatters. I wrote a book about that one.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just this ridiculous areas of so called
Speaker 1: science where people become experts like Dr West. He became
Speaker 1: was a small town dentist who became somehow qualified to
Speaker 1: testify all sorts of scientific theories of guilt. One thing
Speaker 1: that we do, Jason, as you know, with the Innocence Project,
Speaker 1: we advocate in all few the states policies and new
Speaker 1: laws to tighten up the forensics. We have no national standard.
Speaker 1: Any Lee was convicted because of junk science, bad science.
Speaker 1: And you know, again there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: that falled here, the prosecutors who who have no evidence.
Speaker 1: Every wrongful conviction case should start off with the fact
Speaker 1: that there was no physical evidence linking the defendant to
Speaker 1: the crime. Think about that. No fiscal evice, no blood,
Speaker 1: no seemen, no DNA, no fingernails, scratches, no eyewitness nothing.
Speaker 1: There's nothing there for the police. So they have to
Speaker 1: get desperate, and that's how they get false confessions, they
Speaker 1: get jail. How snitches, they hire bogus scientists. That's after
Speaker 1: they arrest the guy. After they pick out their suspect
Speaker 1: with no evidence, they have to build a case. And
Speaker 1: it happens in almost every one of these awful convictions.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flam.
Speaker 1: Please support your local innocence projects and go to the
Speaker 1: link in our bio to see how you can help.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff
Speaker 1: Cleburne and Kevin Warns. The music on the show, as always,
Speaker 1: is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be
Speaker 1: sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction and
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with Jason
Speaker 1: Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in
Speaker 1: association with Signal Company Number one