Chicago Tribune | Bite-mark verdict faces new scrutiny By Flynn McRoberts Tribune staff reporter Published November 29, 2004
YUMA, Ariz. -- Thelma Younkin used an oxygen tube to help her breathe. Her killer used it as a murder weapon. In November 1991, the frail, 65-year-old Younkin was strangled with the tube, bitten and raped in her room at the Post Park Motel along a grim stretch of this desert town. A fellow resident of the low-budget motel, Bobby Lee Tankersley, was convicted and sent to Arizona's Death Row for the attack, based largely on the testimony of a forensic dentist who said he had matched Tankersley's teeth to bite marks on Younkin's body.
But on Monday, the same judge who sentenced Tankersley to death will hold a hearing that promises to showcase the problems of forensic science in America's courts, from the legacy of discredited experts to new DNA tests exposing the questionable science behind many other disciplines, including bite-mark comparison. Tankersley was granted Monday's hearing largely because the forensic dentist who was key to his conviction also was at the center of perhaps the nation's most noted case of mistaken bite-mark testimony. Dr. Raymond Rawson's opinion helped send an innocent man, Ray Krone, to Arizona's Death Row. At Krone's 1992 trial, Rawson said bite marks on a murdered Phoenix cocktail waitress were "a very good match" to Krone's teeth. Rawson also testified during Krone's 1996 retrial that his teeth were "a scientific match" to a spotty pattern of blood on the victim's bra.
Krone, a former postal worker, spent more than a decade in prison before DNA testing proved Rawson wrong, connecting another man to the murder and exonerating Krone. Just last week, Krone, who had been dubbed "the snaggletooth killer," had his teeth redone courtesy of the ABC television show "Extreme Makeover," according to his attorney, Christopher Plourd, who is advising Tankersley's lawyers.
Increasingly, other forensic dentists are questioning whether such definitive declarations can be made about bite marks left in skin, let alone based on blood patterns on clothing.....
La. death penalty examined (2theadvocate.com, Baton Rouge)
By MARK BALLARD
mballard@theadvocate.com
Capitol news bureau
During the past five years, twice as many condemned inmates have walked free from Louisiana's death row than have been executed.
A review of court records since 1999 shows that, of the last 22 inmates removed from death row when their sentences were finally resolved:
•12 had their death sentences reversed and were ordered to serve lesser sentences;
•Six were released after the courts ordered the first-degree murder charges dismissed;
•One died of natural causes; and,
•Three were executed.
Two of the three who were executed were represented by attorneys no longer allowed to practice law, according to the Louisiana Office of Disciplinary Counsel. One of the lawyers was disbarred after being found to have participated in a laundry list of improper behavior involving several cases. The other lost his license because of mental health problems.
Several death-penalty experts say the data is so shocking that Gov. Kathleen Blanco should suspend executions. They say the governor should name a panel to study the issues, as the Republican governor of Illinois unilaterally did.
"I would think that Gov. Blanco would be in favor of a study in the form of a moratorium to find out why is it that we have these kinds of numbers and what can we do to instill confidence in capital punishment," said Nick Trenticosta of New Orleans.
He is director of the Center for Equal Justice, which represents some death-row inmates.
During her campaign last year, Blanco said she would consider a moratorium if statistics indicated problems....
Death penalty works too slowly, families say
BY GARTH STAPLEY
BEE STAFF WRITER
Last Updated: November 29, 2004, 05:59:47 AM PST
Some family members of violent-crime victims are jaded by California's sluggish rate of executing condemned killers.
"If it went faster, the death penalty would be a deterrent," said Carole Carrington, the mother and grandmother of two Yosemite sightseers murdered by handyman Cary Stayner in 1999.
Modesto's Scott Peterson, 32, faces a sentence of death or life in prison without the possibility of parole at the conclusion of a penalty phase scheduled to begin Tuesday. He was convicted Nov. 12 of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son, Conner.
Stayner killed four people in all. In federal court, he received a life term for his killing of a Yosemite naturalist. In state court, for his killing of Carrington's daughter and granddaughter, and their friend, he received a death sentence. That was two years ago.
Carrington and her family aren't holding their breath.
Appeals are required in the state's death row cases. Recent history suggests that it takes officials about four years to appoint appellate lawyers, who then spend about a year studying a case and another preparing arguments. "So it'll be like seven years before an appeal happens," Carrington said.
Once a conviction is affirmed by the state Supreme Court, inmates have an array of additional appeals available to them. The result: Of California's 635 death row inmates, Supreme Court justices have affirmed sentences of only 174. And no inmate in this state has been executed since January 2002.
"They're denying us the right to a speedy resolution," said George Cullins, an ex-Marine who has "been fighting the system since 1984." That is when a serial killer murdered his daughter in San Diego [...]
"Texas has a better system," Carrington said. California's slow road to death seems to serve condemned inmates by keeping them isolated — and protected — from the general prison population, she said.....
Let's ignore, for the moment, the fact that the death penalty isn't really much of a deterrent -- people either don't consider consequences or don't think they'll get caught, or think that if they do get caught there may be some sort of mitigating circumstances they can present -- and the ludicrousness of anyone asserting that any part of Texas' judicial system actually works ... it will be interesting to see what happens in those three states regarding death penalty enforcement. Louisiana and Arizona being rather firmly in favor of the death penalty, I would think that getting past people feeling, as they seem to in California, that they would rather have fast resolution than accurate resolution is going to be difficult. (Sad thing is, to the extent that any of these systems works, California's really does seem to do better than most. The long chain of appeals does a better job of assuring that the person who was convicted actually did the deed and had a fair trial than does, say, Texas' hang-em-high, hang-em-fast approach to justice.) Legislators being what they are, they will likely pander to the public's demand for speedier executions, whatever the cost. Assuming that Louisiana's constitution allows it, Blanco will almost certainly have to do a moratorium by executive order, and then hope that the legislature wouldn't override it. Heaven only knows what will happen in Arizona. It's also hard to tell if California will initiate any sorts of "reforms" in their process; being in favor of the death penalty in general may get you votes, but being in favor of making the system less accurate as well as faster may not do the same.
The moratorium in Illinois was put in place by a decidedly unpopular governor on his way out by executive order, and has been sustained mostly because the current governor doesn't feel any urgency to change things. Sustaining the order isn't particularly difficult, politically; putting it in place, if you have political ambitions, will be massively difficult, and likely may be enough to cost some governor their job.
Even here, the solution we've cobbled together isn't really the best. For some reason, as a whole, people in this state seem to be content with a system in which people can be sentenced to death but not actually executed. (This is not, of course, generally true of the relatives and friends of anyone who gets murdered.) It works -- depending on your definition of "works" -- but it's not really a tenable long-term solution to the issues involved. Eventually -- maybe after Hot Rod Blagojevich goes on to wherever his ambitions take him -- there will come a governor perfectly comfortable with removing the moratorium.
Posted by iain at November 29, 2004 11:49 AM
