NCJ Number
162449
Journal
ABA Journal Volume: 82 Dated: (February 1996) Pages: 50-55
Date Published
1996
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the history and the criticisms of Michael H. West, a forensic dentist, who testifies regularly in courts regarding the matching of teeth to bite marks, among other matters pertinent to placing or excluding a defendant at a crime scene.
Abstract
By his own estimate, West has appeared in court as an expert approximately 55 times in nine States over the past dozen or so years, at least a third to a half of which were capital murder cases. He says he lost his first bite-mark case in 1983 but has not lost one at trial since (excluding any convictions reversed on appeal). West's proclaimed expertise, however, is not limited to bite marks. He has been used, mostly as a prosecution expert witness, to match wounds with weapons, shoes with footprints, fingernails with scratches, and even spills with stains. West is perhaps best known for his controversial use of a special blue light to study wound patterns on a body. With a pair of yellow- lensed goggles and a long-wave ultraviolet light, West claims he can see things that are otherwise invisible to the unaided eye. The problem with the blue light, according to his scientific counterparts, is that West sees things under it that he cannot document and that nobody else can see. His peers further say that even when he has not used such a light, West has claimed to see things that he has not been able to document. Many of his critics insist that West is an incompetent scientist who fails to follow generally accepted scientific techniques and testifies about his findings with an unheard of degree of scientific certainty. West is suing the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, from which he resigned in 1994, after its ethics committee recommended that he be expelled for allegedly failing to meet professional standards of research, misrepresenting data to support a general acceptance of his techniques, and offering opinions that exceed a reasonable degree of scientific certainty. West also was suspended 2 years ago from the American Board of Forensic Odontology. The board found that West had misrepresented evidence and testified outside his field of expertise. The fact that West continues to be allowed to testify as an expert witness in criminal trials raises the issue about the court's criteria for qualifying experts with questionable scientific backgrounds and methods. Some of the cases in which West has testified are reviewed in this article.