How the Flawed Science of Bite Mark Analysis Imprisoned a Man for Murder - The Intercept - First Look Media
When he’s working on the roof, six stories up, 65-year-old Bill Richards says he almost feels like he’s part of the real world again — he can see into the hills and the baseball fields. Being in prison, he says, is like living on an “alien planet — here’s the one we’re on, here’s the one you’re on. ”. Someday he hopes to rejoin the world outside. But for now, Richards is serving a sentence of 25-to-life for murdering his wife, Pamela, in August 1993 — a crime he insists he did not commit. He says he was the victim of a shoddy police investigation, an overzealous prosecution, and, most significantly, questionable forensic evidence. The state used this evidence as conclusive proof that only Richards could have strangled and bludgeoned his wife of 22 years, leaving her half-naked body in the dirt outside a shed on their 5-acre property near Hesperia in California’s High Desert. The critical piece of evidence: a bruise found on the top of Pamela’s right hand, Richards had already been incarcerated for 15 years when, during an evidentiary hearing in 2008, the state’s star witness, Dr. Norman “Skip” Sperber, a legend within... Source: firstlook.org
