Eckholm, Erik. "Virginia Inmate Freed After DNA Tests Refute Bite-Mark Evidence." The New
York Times. The New York Times, 08 Apr. 2016. Web. 12 Apr. 2016.
The article called, “Virginia Inmate Freed After DNA Tests Refute Bite-Mark Evidence” is about how a man who had served for 33 years in prison for a murder and rape case was just released. Innocence Project members had gotten their hands on DNA evidence from the case, and claimed that it did not match the DNA of Mr.Harward (the suspect). The case began in 1982 when the police did not have solid leads a murder case where a home invader had killed a man and raped the man’s wife. A few months later, a girlfriend accused Mr. Harward of biting her and the police began to suspect Mr.Harward. A naval officer at the time, who had been undergoing hypnosis, told the police that he saw Mr.Harward with blood on his shirt. The case was taken to court, and the only evidence against Mr.Harward was the single bite mark. Dr. Lowell J. Levine, who was known for using dentistry to solve cases, had testified that the bite marks on the women and Mr.Harward’s matched. He was sentenced to life in prison. Last year, a court ordered the DNA testing of several items previously found at the crime scenes. After the testing, it cleared Mr.Harward’s name and was found that he was not the perpetrator. M. Chris Fabricant, who worked as the director of the Innocence project says “Any conviction resting on this grossly unreliable technique is inherently flawed. Every state in the nation should be conducting reviews to see if there are others like Mr. Harward sitting in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.”
This article is very relevant to our world today. Because of inadequate or flawed evidence, millions of people are being sentenced to death or to life in prison for something that they did not commit. This shows that despite all the technological advances, we still have to be careful with how we are using evidence since it can determine how someone’s life. This article highlighted the importance of having sufficient data to convict someone, and how important the job of a forensic investigator is. The article was also useful in explaining how useful reviewing the evidence is for old criminal cases because new insight on a case can always occur.
I liked this article because it provided a lot of detail about the case and explained in depth about how Mr.Harward was convicted. It would have been useful to have a quote from the judge who sentenced Mr.Harward and see his view on why he/she convicted someone based only on one piece of unreliable evidence.
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