The Kareem Andre Williams Murder Case

     On January 11, 2013, Lauren Kanoff from New York City was in Boynton Beach, Florida, a Palm Beach County town north of Hallandale Beach visiting her 80-year-old father, Albert Honigman. Mr. Honigman lived in the Aberdeen Development, a gated retirement community considered safe from crime. Mr. Honigman had grown up on Long Island, New York and after retirement moved to Florida's southeast coast with his wife Phyllis. In 2011 Phyllis passed away.

     At ten o'clock Friday night, January 11, 2013, Lauren and her father were unloading packages from their car in their open garage after an evening of shopping. A man walked up behind Lauren, and when she turned around, he punched her in the eye and side of her face. The blow knocked her down, and for a few seconds rendered her unconscious. When Lauren came to she saw the assailant over her downed father punching him in the face. "You stay down old man," he said, "I have a friend in the car with a gun."

     Lauren did not see the car, but she got a good look at the attacker, describing him to the police as a 6-foot, athletically built black man in his 20s or 30s. Before the assailant left the scene he stole several pieces of jewelry and Mr. Honigman's $26,000 Rolex watch.

     Paramedics rushed Albert Honigman to the Bethesda West Hospital where he was given a brain CAT scan. The next morning the patient went home but later in the day was called back to the hospital after the CAT scan revealed blood on his brain. The following day, January 13, Mr. Honigman returned to his retirement condo. He went to bed where, a few hours later, his daughter found him dead.

     The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy determined that Mr. Honigman had been killed by blunt force trauma to the head. The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's office classified the manner of this 80-year-old's death as criminal homicide.

     In speaking to a reporter after her father's murder, his daughter said, "I don't know if he [the assailant/robber] followed us in, I have no idea. All we know is we turned around...and suddenly I'm down, my father's down."

     In the wake of the robbery and homicide, residents of the Aberdeen Development in Boynton Beach were apprehensive. Mr. Honigman's murder destroyed the sense of security in this retirement community. One of the Boynton Beach retirees said this to a reporter: "It's a very frustrating experience to have someone who lives in [your] gated community get murdered. It's terrifying."

     Homicide detectives, by reviewing surveillance camera tapes, determined that Lauren Kanoff and her father had been followed home from the Boca Raton Town Center Mall by a man in a silver Camaro. On February 6, 2013, officers in West Palm Beach arrested 25-year-old Kareem Andre Williams. The murder suspect, a personal trainer with L. A. Fitness, resided in Loxachatche, Florida. In Palm Beach County, Williams had been arrested for grand theft and carrying a concealed weapon. In 2011 Williams was released from a Florida prison after serving time for armed burglary and several firearms offenses.

     Kareem Williams, the owner of a car that matched the Camero seen following the victims home from their shopping trip, was placed, through cellphone records, at the mall at the same time the victims were there. A mall surveillance camera tape also showed Williams and Albert Honigman in the same proximity near one of the shopping mall's exits.

     On February 15, 2013, a Palm Beach County prosecutor charged Kareem Williams with first-degree murder and lesser offenses. The magistrate denied bail for the suspect of this brutal home invasion homicide.

     On February 9, 2016, a jury found Mr. Williams guilty of first-degree murder, burglary with assault and robbery. Two days after the verdict, the judge sentenced Williams to two consecutive life sentences.

The Anesson Joseph Police-Involved Shooting Case

     On February 4, 2014 at eight-thirty in the evening, Douglas Kozlik, a 66-year-old retired New York City police officer on a stroll in Delray Beach, Florida, saw something that caused him great concern. A six-foot-three, 250-pound young man with a crazed look and obvious bad intentions charged toward him. The fact this physically imposing stranger was also naked told the ex-cop he was in imminent danger of being attacked.

     Mr. Kozlik's assessment of the bizarre situation turned out to be correct. Within a matter of seconds he found himself on the ground with the large maniac on top of him throwing punches. A 10-year-old boy not far from the unprovoked assault ran for his life.

     After leaving Mr. Kozlik on the ground badly beaten, the naked menace moved on. At the main entrance of the Colony, a gated neighborhood in Delray Beach, the wild man--later identified as a West Palm Beach 28-year-old named Anesson Joseph--came upon 16-year-old Tania Grein who was taking trash out of her family's house. Tania's 18-year-old brother Tony, who happened to be working in the yard with  his father, tackled Joseph as he grabbed Tania by the hair. The five-foot-six, 150-pound Boynton High School senior began stabbing the nude attacker in the face with a box cutter. The boy's father, Mario Grein, tried to help his children by punching the crazy man in the head.

     Unfazed by the box cutter wounds and the punches to his face, the frenzied man, grunting like an animal, started biting the teenage boy on the cheek and ear. Tony Grein was saved when the automatic security gate closed, knocking the crazy man to the ground. The attacker got to his feet and ran off with the teenager pinned beneath the gate.

     Responding to 911 calls placed by witnesses to Anesson Joseph's rampage, five deputies with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office encountered him not far from the entrance to the Colony. The subject crouched into a fighting stance then charged the officers. Unable to get the subject off his feet and onto the ground, a deputy shot him several times with a taser gun. When that technique failed to subdue Mr. Joseph, a sergeant pulled his gun and shot the subject three times in the torso.

    Fire and rescue personnel rolled up to the scene but were unable to treat the wounded man who was incapacitated but still combative. A few hours later Anesson Joseph died at the Delray Medical Center.

     Mr. Kozlik and Tony Grein were also treated at the hospital for their injuries. The 18-year-old who saved his sister from the zombie-like attacker ended up with teeth marks on his face. The 10-year-old boy had hurt himself when he tried to escape by crawling under a fence. One of the deputy sheriff's also required medical attention.

     According to Anesson Joseph's Facebook page, he worked for a West Palm Beach entertainment company called Nightlife University Parties and Events. Prior to that he had been employed at a local Starbucks. Joseph had attended Forest Hill Community High School and had no criminal record in Florida.

     The Joseph case is reminiscent of a police-involved shooting in Miami that occurred in May 2012. In that assault, a 31-year-old naked man named Rudy Eugene was shot on MacArthur Causeway as he chewed off most of a homeless man's face.

     Investigators believed that Anesson Joseph removed his striped polo shirt, dark shorts and a pair of flip flops not far from the Kozlik attack. There was speculation that he had been under the influence of some kind of mind altering drug. Toxicological tests later confirmed this suspicion.

The Aaron Jackson Murder Case

     The ideal eyewitness is a person with excellent eyesight who is unbiased, honest, sober and intelligent. Unfortunately, most eyewitnesses are either not sober, intelligent, unbiased, honest or sure of their identifications. Moreover, they can be bribed, misled and intimidated. Eyewitness misidentification has caused thousands of wrongful convictions. In the 1930s pioneers in the field of forensic science hoped that the scientific interpretation of physical clues--fingerprints, bullets, blood, and the like--would make this form of direct evidence unnecessary. That day hasn't come. Police and prosecutors still rely heavily on eyewitnesses, and often at their peril.

The Aaron Jackson Murder Case

     In 2001, police in Springfield, Illinois arrested Aaron "Chill" Jackson, a 36-year-old ex-con who had served 6 years in prison for armed robbery. Charged with the shooting death of 27-year-old Durrell Alexander, Jackson, a vicious and dangerous criminal, was held on $1 million bond. A pair of eyewitnesses said they saw the defendant shoot Alexander in the chest and abdomen. A year later, just before the trial, the eyewitnesses took back their identifications. Without this testimony the state's attorney in Sangamon County had no choice but to drop the case. Investigators believed that Mr. Jackson threatened these witnesses.

     In Washington Park, Illinois on April 1, 2010, at 5:47 in the morning, a passenger in John Thornton's 1998 Buick Regal shot him three times in the chest causing the car to crash. John Thornton, the mayor of Washington Park had been cracking down on local crime. Two women who saw the 52-year-old's car go off the road told a detective they saw Aaron Jackson climb out of the wrecked Buick and limp to a vehicle waiting nearby. Police arrested him that day.

     The state's attorney, in addition to eyewitnesses Nortisha Ball and Gilda Lott, could link the suspect to the scene of the shooting in three ways: a latent fingerprint on the Buick's outside rear passenger door; a trace of his blood on the passenger's side deployed airbag; and a speck of the victim's blood on the suspect's left pant pocket. While this last piece of physical evidence was too small for a complete DNA profile, the state DNA analyst determined that the suspect was among a small population of black people--one in 4,200--who could not be eliminated as the donor of the blood speck.

     In October 2010 the Jackson trial blew up in the prosecutor's face when one of the eyewitnesses, Nortisha Ball, testified that a police detective named Kim McAfee, who had since been convicted in federal court of 39 white collar felonies, forced her to pick Jackson's mugshot out of a photograph line-up. Another witness, Lequisha Jackson (no relation to the defendant) testified that Detective McAfee offered her money to testify that he had not been at the scene of the shooting. (Apparently McAfee had initially been a suspect himself in the Thornton murder case.) The judge declared a mistrial.

     On April 12, 2012, Mr. Jackson's second murder trial got underway. The prosecutor, Steve Sallerson, put eyewitness Nortisha Ball back on the stand. Now serving time on a burglary conviction, the 23-year-old had led the prosecutor to believe she would identify the defendant as the man she had seen limping from Thornton's Buick after it had crashed. Instead she threw him a curve by testifying she did not get a good look because it was dark that morning. Moreover, she was 150 yards away from the car and was under the influence of alcohol and drugs. On cross-examination, defense attorney Thomas Q. Keefe III got Nortisha Ball to say that Detective McAfee forced her to pick the defendant's photograph out of the spread of mugshots.

     Nortisha Ball, perhaps under threat from the defendant, became a prosecutor's worst courtroom nightmare. The other eyewitness, Gilda Lott, a witness with a history of drug related convictions, wasn't much better. She contradicted herself, acted confused then broke down on the stand. The judge had to threaten her with contempt to induce her to respond to the prosecutor's questions. At best, as a prosecution witness, Gilda Lott was useless. It seemed the defendant had gotten to her as well.

     While the two eyewitnesses were a complete prosecution disaster, the state DNA analyst, Jay Winters, identified the blood spot on the airbag as the defendant's. Using a more sophisticated DNA analysis on the speck of blood found on Jackson's trousers, Mr. Winters placed the defendant in a one in 46,000 population of black people who could not be excluded as the donor of this crime scene evidence.

     State fingerprint examiner Melissa Gamboe testified that the latent print on the rear passenger door of the mayor's Buick had been left by the defendant. 

     On April 27, 2012, the St. Clair County jury took just 5 hours to find Aaron Jackson guilty of murder. The judge, on August 27, 2012, sentenced Jackson to 35 years in prison. 

     The Jackson case is a good example of the value of physical evidence over eyewitness testimony. Because most jurors have seen TV shows like "CSI" they tend to have faith in forensic science and forensic scientists. 

The Matthew White Murder Case

     In 1979, Matthew White, a six-foot-eleven center from Bethesda, Maryland, led the University of Pennsylvania Quakers to the NCAA final four. Mr. White was picked that year in the fifth round of the NBA draft by the Portland Trailblazers. Instead of entering the NBA he earned a MBA from the Wharton School of Business. In 1984 Mr. White moved to Spain where, for the next twelve years, he played professional basketball. While in Spain the basketball player met and married Marie Reyes Garcia-Pellon.

     In 2010 after he suffered a stroke, Mr. White and Garcia-Pellon moved from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania to Nether Providence, a township near the eastern Pennsylvania town of Media. He, his wife and their 20-year-old son and teen-age daughter moved into a ranch-style home. Garcia-Pellon worked as a teacher's aide at the Nether Providence Elementary School.

     On February 10, 2013 the 55-year-old former Ivy League basketball star took his wife to an area hospital after her friends expressed concern about her mental health. Garcia-Pellon, no stranger to mental illness, had previously undergone psychiatric treatment. For some reason she was not admitted into the hospital that Sunday.

     On Monday afternoon, February 11, 2013, a friend of Garcia-Pellon's called the police department to report that Matthew White may have been murdered by his wife. At the Nether Providence house police officers found Matthew White sprawled out dead in the master bedroom. He had been stabbed in the neck.

     When questioned at the death scene Garcia-Pellon told the responders that sometime between midnight and one in the morning she got out of bed and walked into the kitchen where she picked up two knives. She returned to her husband, slipped the knives under her side of the bed and waited for him to fall asleep. When she was certain he was asleep she used one of the knives to stab him in the neck. The victim rose up, cried, "I'm dying, I'm dying" then fell back onto the bed and died.

     After killing her husband Garcia-Pellon got dressed and left the house. (Her son was no longer living at home and her daughter was attending college.) Later in the day she showed up at a friend's house. Garcia-Pellon told her friend that she had stabbed Matthew in the neck as he slept. The friend called the police.

     As a police officer handcuffed the 52-year-old murder suspect, Garcia-Pellon said, "I caught him looking at pornography, young girls. I love kids. I had to do it." (According to the police there was no evidence in White's computer that he had been viewing child pornography.)

     On Monday night the Delaware County district attorney charged Garcia-Pellon with first-degree murder, criminal homicide and possession of an instrument of crime. She was held without bail in the Delaware County Jail.

     Kathryn Labrum, Garcia-Pellon's Media, Pennsylvania attorney, on Wednesday, February 20, 2013 told reporters that her client was "so separated from reality right now." The lawyer described Garcia-Pellon's mental state as a "psychiatric crises." Attorney Labrum  said:  "He [Matthew White] knew that she needed help, tried to get her help and there you have it--a beautiful family ruined."

     In February 2015, after being found guilty of murder but mentally ill (a verdict that required mental health treatment while serving a 25-year prison term) the judge immediately probated Garcia-Pellon's sentence and ordered her transferred from the jail to the Norristown State Hospital. The judge did not believe the prison system was equipped to deal with someone so insane. The adjusted sentence meant that Garcia-Pellon, when declared sane, could be placed back into society. No one associated with this case seemed to object to this outcome.

The Death of Anneka Vasta: Hollywood Noir

     Anneka Vasta was born Marjorie Lee Thoreson in July 1952 in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1973 she met and started dating Penthouse Magazine publisher Bob Guccione. Two years later she became Guccione's Penthouse pet of the year and in 1979 starred as Anneka Di Lorenzo in Guccione's soft-porn film, "Caligula."

     Vasta, in 1988, claiming that Guccione had compelled her to have sex with two of his business associates, sued him for sexual harassment. The jury, in 1990, awarded her $4 million but an appeals court on procedural grounds vacated the award. In retaliation for the suit Mr. Guccione reprinted photographs of Vasta and another woman in a lesbian love scene from "Caligula."

     In 2003, while living in Sherman Oaks, California, Anneka Vasta began suffering bouts of paranoia and anxiety. Seven years later the recently divorced 58-year-old, now having financial problems, still struggled with mental illness.

     A pair of joggers on January 4, 2011 discovered Vasta's naked body on a Marine training beach at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County. Agents with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) took control of the case. Shortly after the discovery of the corpse investigators located the 59-year-old's Mazda at a popular scenic overlook along Interstate 5. Because her body could not have reached the water from this point NCIS agents concluded that Vasta had not jumped off the sixty foot cliff.

     At autopsy the forensic pathologist determined that while Vasta had a broken neck and back, she had drowned. The pathologist found on Vasta's wrists superficial cuts called "hesitation marks" that suggested half-hearted attempts at suicide. The body also revealed two shallow stab wounds to her chest. Vasta's body contained no traces of alcohol or drugs. The autopsy produced no evidence of sexual abuse.

     In the dead woman's car searchers found blood-stained clothing--a blouse and a sports bra--inside a plastic bag. Investigators also found a steak knife bearing traces of her blood. The Mazda also contained Vasta's cellphone and purse. On the passenger's side floor investigators discovered Lithium and an empty Xanax bottle.

     Two days before the joggers came upon Vasta's body in the sand she rented a room at a Motel 6 on Raintree Drive near South Carlsbad State Beach. She had not checked out. Investigators found no evidence of violence or foul play in her motel room.

     Vasta's history of paranoia and anxiety, and the presence of the hesitation marks, suggested she killed herself. But, as in most suspicious death cases without eyewitnesses or obvious suspects, questions remained. For example, how did she get from her car to the water? How did she receive the broken neck and back before drowning in the Pacific? Could these injuries been caused by the action of the ocean before her death?

     Anneka Vasta's life and sudden death--the star-struck gal from Minnesota, corrupted and abused by a sleazy Hollywood porn merchant--is the stuff of Los Angeles noir. It brings to mind the famous quote by novelist and screen writer Ben Hecht: "I knew her name--Madam Hollywood. I rose and said good-by to this strumpet in her bespangled red gown; good-by to her lavender-painted cheeks, her coarsened laugh, her straw-dyed hair, her wrinkled fingers bulging with gems. A wench with flaccid tits and a sandpaper skin under her silks; shined up and whistling like a whore in a park; covered with stink like a railroad station pissery and swinging a dead ass in the moonlight."

     On Tuesday, May 13, 2014, Anneka Vasta, having quickly faded from public consciousness, briefly surfaced in the media on the occasion of the death of a Swiss artist named H. R. Giger. The 74-year-old was best known for his design of the creature in Ridley Scott's science fiction film, "Alien." Internet articles regarding Giger's death from a fall featured him posing with Anneka Vasta in April 1980 at the opening of an art exhibition in New York City.  

The Un-Great Escape

     On May 12, 2002 34-year-old Steven L. Robbins got into a fight at a party in Indianapolis with a man from Kentucky. During the altercation Mr. Robbins shot 24-year-old Richard Melton to death. Eighteen months later the Gary, Indiana native was found guilty of first-degree murder. The judge sentenced him to sixty years in prison. (Robbins wasn't eligible for parole until 2029.)

     On Tuesday, January 29, 2013 Steven Robbins, now 44, was transported from the state prison in Michigan City, an Indiana town 50 miles east of Chicago, to the Cook County Jail. He had a court hearing the next day pertaining to a 1992 Illinois felony charge.

     On Wednesday, after the judge informed Mr. Robbins that the old charge against him had been dismissed in 2007 (why did they summon him to Illinois to tell him that?) the prisoner was returned to the Cook County Jail.

     Corrections officers responsible for hauling Robbins back to Indiana, on Thursday, January 31 called the Cook County Jail to alert officials they would pick up Robbins for his trip back to prison. That's when the Indiana authorities learned that Robbins had been released from custody the previous evening at seven o'clock. Because no one at the Cook County Jail knew that he was serving a sentence in Indiana for murder he simply walked out of the massive lock-up through the main door.

     The fact that Steven Robbins had been transported to Chicago to face charges that were dismissed five years earlier suggested there was something profoundly wrong with the corrections bureaucracy in both states. It went without saying that a major bureaucratic SNAFU led to Robbins' easy escape from the Cook County Jail.

     On February 1, 2013 police in the northern Illinois town of Kankakee arrested Robbins at the home of a friend. He was watching TV. The Cook County Sheriff, in an unusual move, took responsibility for the foul-up. "We let people down, no mistake about it." Fortunately, while loose, Robbins did not commit any serious crimes. For Robbins, the easy part was getting out of the Cook County Jail. Staying out proved more difficult. 

When Does Speech Become A Criminal Act?

     In December 2018, 21-year-old Alexander Urtula, a biology major at Boston College met Inyoung You, a 20-year-old South Korean girl attending the school as an economics major. Urtula was an outstanding student who was active in the college's Philippine Society of Boston, an organization for Filipino students.

     On May 20, 2019, the day of his graduation from Boston College, Alexander Urtula was deeply depressed and suicidal. As recorded on his Internet journal read by classmates and family members, and documented throughout the 47,000 text messages he received from Inyoung You, Mr. Urtula had been the victim of intense and prolonged psychological abuse committed by his South Korean girlfriend.

     To control Alexander Urtula and isolate him from his friends and family, Inyoung You repeatedly threatened to harm herself if he didn't do what she demanded. And what she demanded, in the weeks leading up to Urtula's graduation, was for him to take his own life. In her text messages she wrote things like "Go kill yourself," and "Go die."

     On the morning of May 20, 2019, the day of the college's graduation ceremony, Inyoung You used her cellphone to track the despondent Urtula to the roof of a parking garage in the Roxbury section of Boston. With You standing on the parking garage roof not far from him, Alexander Urtula jumped to his death. Allegedly, You made no attempt to dissuade him from leaping from the structure.

     In August 2019, three months following Urtula's suicide, Inyoung You withdrew from Boston College and returned to South Korea.

     Suffolk County prosecutor Rachael Rollins, in October 2019, presented a case to a grand jury that returned an indictment against Inyoung You on the charge of involuntary manslaughter. The rationale behind the charge involved You's reckless disregard for Urtula's life by intentionally tormenting him with psychological abuse that included telling him to kill himself. To make this case, the prosecutor would have to establish a direct casual relationship between You's abuse and Urtula's death.
   
     At a press conference following the grand jury indictment, prosecutor Rollins told reporters that You's "abuse became more frequent and more demanding in the days and hours leading up to Urtula's death."

     If Inyoung You was extradited to the United States for criminal trial her defense would include the argument that her text messages and other forms of communication with Alexander Urtula were constitutionally protected as free speech under the First Amendment. Moreover, she would argue that her behavior, while despicable, was not the principle cause Urtula's mental illness and suicide. Her attorney would no doubt also make the point that talking a person into suicide is different that helping a person take his or her life. One is speech, the other a criminal act.

     The above legal issues were never argued because in December 2021, following her extradition to the United States, You pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. The Suffolk County judge sentenced her to ten years probation. 

Bite Mark Identification: Discredited Evidence

     The identification of a series of bruises or abrasions, usually in the shape of two semi-circles or brackets, as a human bite mark made by a particular set of teeth is a function of forensic dentistry referred to as bite mark identification. This form of impression identification, also called forensic odontology, is based on the assumption that no two people in the world have front teeth that are identical in thickness, shape, relationship to each other and patterns of wear.

     The process of comparing a bite mark to a known set of teeth is not unlike the identification of latent fingerprint, footwear and tire track impressions. Bite mark wounds are found on victims of murder, rape and child molestation. This type of crime scene evidence is preserved by life-size photography, tooth mark tracings onto transparent sheets and dental casts of the impressions themselves. A suspect might be asked to bite down on a pliable surface for an impression sample, have a cast made of his teeth, or both. Usually, connecting a suspect to a victim through expert bite mark testimony will be enough evidence, by itself, to sustain a criminal conviction.

     The field of bite mark identification exploded in the 1980s, and hundreds, if not thousands of defendants between 1983 and 2002 were sent to prison on the strength of bite mark testimony. Although bite mark identification had been a recognized branch of forensic science since 1970, it was the 1979 trial of serial killer Ted Bundy in south Florida that put this form of identification on the map the way the O. J. Simpson case in the mid-1990s popularized DNA profiling.

     At the peak of bite mark evidence credibility among forensic scientists, detectives, prosecutors and judges, this form of impression identification was put on the level with the matching of fingerprints. However by 2003 forensic scientists were seriously questioning the assumption that bite marks were as unique and identifiable as latent fingerprints.

     Over the years several leaders in the bite mark field oversold the reliability of this form of identification. For example in 1977 Dr. Lowell J. Levine, a forensic dentistry consultant to the New York City Medical Examiner's Office, wrote: "Since every person's teeth are unique in respect to spacing, twisting, turning, shapes, tipping toward the tongue or lips, wear patterns, breakage, fillings, caps, loss and the like, all of which occur in limitless combinations, it is possible for them to leave a pattern which for identification purposes is as good as a fingerprint."

     In 1996 Dr. C. Michael Bowers, a prominent southern California odontologist, was one of the first forensic scientists to raise doubts about the credibility of bite make identification when he wrote: "Physical matching of bite marks is a non-science which was developed with little testing and no published error rate....An opinion is worth nothing unless the supportive data is clearly describable and can be demonstrated in court. How does one weight the importance of a single rotated tooth in a bite mark when the suspect has a similar tooth? The value judgments range widely on the value of this feature. This is not science. Instead, statistical levels of confidence must be included in the process."

     In a bite mark identification exercise Dr. Bowers conducted in a workshop at the 1999 American Academy of Forensic Science conference, 63 percent of the odontologists who participated made an incorrect identification, findings that displeased many in the field when Dr. Bowers published the results of his experiment. In an article published in 2003 in the British Dental Journal, Dr. D. K. Whittaker, a forensic dentistry professor at the University of Wales, explained why bite mark evidence is so difficult to identify, particularly bite marks on skin:

     "Human bites on skin are difficult to interpret because skin is not good 'impression' material. Moreover, victims may struggle and movement will distort the image of the bite. Skin surfaces are not flat and visual distortion may be present, often heightened by photographic distortion caused by inadequate imaging techniques. Human dentitions, whilst possibly being unique in the small nuances of tooth size, shape, angulation and texture may not inflict unique bite marks which can only record gross and not fine detail. If the victim survives, the injury may change due to infection or subsequent healing and if the victim is deceased, putrefaction may introduce distortion."

     Before odontologists in Great Britain can testify in court as bite mark experts they must have made a minimum of twenty such identifications in other cases. In the United States, an odontologist can be certified by the American Board of Forensic Odontology after two bite mark identifications. As a result, being certified in this forensic field in the United States shouldn't carry much weight. (In fact, two of America's most notorious charlatans in the field were both board certified bite mark experts.)

     In 2004, as part of a journalistic series on forensic science, the Chicago Tribune examined 154 state and federal trials involving bite mark identification testimony. In more than a quarter of these cases the prosecution and the defense produced forensic odontologists whose expert opinions were diametrically opposed. If bite mark identification is an exact science practiced by highly qualified experts, this many odontologists should not have been testifying against each other.

The Debra Milke Murder-For-Hire Case

     In December 1989, 25-year-old Debra Milke lived in Phoenix, Arizona with her 4-year-old son Christopher and a man named James Styers. She rented a room in Styers' house. A few days before Christmas Debta Milke asked Mr. Styers to drive Christopher to the mall so he could visit Santa Claus. Instead of taking the boy to the shopping mall Styers and a friend drove him to a secluded ravine outside of town where Styers shot the boy three times in the head. Detectives and prosecutors believed that Debra Milke arranged the murder of her son for a $50,000 insurance payout. 

      James Styers confessed to the homicide and was convicted of first degree-murder. At his trial neither he nor his friend implicated Milke in the alleged murder-for-hire plot. No other witnesses came forward with incriminating evidence against the mother.

     Evidence that Debra Milke plotted the murder came from a Phoenix detective named Armando Saldate. According to the detective, Milke told him that her role in the conspiracy to murder her son had been "a bad judgment call." Milke's interrogation had not been recorded and Saldate was the only officer involved in her questioning. The mother proclaimed her innocence from the beginning and denied making any kind of confession to Detective Saldate or anyone else. A local prosecutor, relying on the detective's credibility, charged Debra Milke with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse and kidnapping.

     Detective Saldate, at Milke's October 1990 murder trial, testified that the mother confessed to him regarding her role in her son's homicide. The defendant took the stand, professed her innocence and called the detective a liar. As is often the case jurors believed the police officer over the defendant. The jury returned a guilty verdict. A few months later the judge sentenced Debra Milke to death.

     As it turned out Detective Armando Saldate was in fact a notorious liar. Prior to his interrogation of Milke he had been caught committing perjury in four criminal trials. His credibility was so compromised judges refused to accept into evidence confessions this detective had acquired.

     On March 14, 2013 Chief Federal Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Milke's conviction and vacated her sentence. The 49-year-old had been on Arizona's death row for 22 years. Based on Detective Saldate's history of perjury and other incidents of police misconduct, Judge Kozinski ruled that Milke's confession should have been excluded from her trial. Without this dishonest detective's tainted testimony the prosecution had no case. In rationalizing his decision, Judge Kozinski wrote: "No civilized system of justice should have to depend on such flimsy evidence, quite possibly tainted by dishonesty or overzealousness, to decide whether to take someone's life or liberty."

     On September 6, 2013, Judge Rosa Mroz of the Maricopa County Superior Court set the 49-year-old prisoner free on $250,000 bond. County prosecutors said they planned to bring Milke back to trial by the end of that month. Once again, the prosecution would seek the death penalty. The defendant's attorneys petitioned the Arizona Court of Appeals to throw out the first-degree murder charge.

     On December 12, 2014 a three-judge panel on the state appeals court ruled that a retrial in the Milke case would amount to double jeopardy. According to the court, "The failure to disclose evidence calls into question the integrity of the system and was highly prejudicial to this defendant." The appellate court ordered the dismissal of all charges against Debra Milke.

The History of the Polygraph

      The polygraph was invented in 1921 by Dr. John Larson, a 27-year-old University of California Berkeley medical student with a Ph.D. in physiology. Dr. Larson worked as a part-time police officer at the Berkeley Police Department under Chief August Vollmer. Larson had read a 1908 book called On The Witness Stand by the Harvard psychiatrist, Hugo Munsterberg who had been searching for a method of scientific lie detection since the turn of the century.

     In his chapter "The Traces of the Emotion" Dr. Munsterberg wrote that three physiological events take place whenever a person lies. First, the liar's blood pressure and heart beat increase; second, there are respiratory alterations; and third, telling a lie changes the person's galvanic skin response, or GSR. To measure GSR Dr. Munsterberg used a galvanometer that picked-up variations in the body's resistance to electricity. (Munsterberg found that when the brain is excited emotionally the individual's sweat glands alter the body's resistance to electricity.)

     In 1921 Chief Vollmer asked his "college cop" to fashion a lie detection instrument detectives could use to detect deception in the people they interrogate. After working several weeks on the project Dr. Larson informed Vollmer that he had rigged an apparatus that could detect truth and deception, an instrument he called the polygraph.

     The cumbersome tangle of rubber hoses wires and glass tubing was five feet long, two and a half feet high and weighed thirty pounds. The device could be taken apart and moved from one place to another, but it took an hour to set up.

     Larson's instrument advanced Munsterberg's technique in four ways. The polygraph recorded the physiological responses on a continuous graph while the subject was being questioned. This was an improvement over the technique of asking a question then taking the examinee's blood pressure. The second advantage involved the ability to adjust the instrument in order to control such variables as high blood pressure or extreme nervousness. Larson's invention also produced a tangible and permanent record of test results that could be later analyzed by other experts. And finally the polygraph detected and recorded the subject's breathing patterns in addition to blood pressure and pulse rate.

     In the spring of 1921 John Larson tested the polygraph on Chief Vollmer and members of the Berkeley Police Department. The results of these experiments convinced Vollmer that Larson had invented a device that would revolutionize the art and science of criminal investigation. Larson, as the department's polygraph examiner, began using the instrument to solve a series of petty theft cases at the University of California.

     Today, for a polygraph result to be accurate the instrument (vastly more sophisticated than Larson's invention) has to be in good working order. Moreover, the examiner must be properly trained and experienced in question formation and line chart interpretation. (Police polygraph examiners have to fight against their own bias.) Subjects have to be willing participants in the process, not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, be obese, retarded or mentally ill. People who are very old or under fourteen do not make reliable polygraph subjects.

     In 1988 the U.S. Congress passed a law making it illegal for private employers to use the polygraph as a pre-employment screening device. Police departments and federal law enforcement agencies, however, use the polygraph for this purpose. At present no court in the country allows the admission of polygraph results as evidence of defendants' guilt. On the other hand, defense attorneys can use polygraph findings as evidence of innocence.