“Unless you have DNA, you really can’t use a bite mark to identify somebody,” she added. Among them are the Walter Lomax Act, signed on Tuesday, which improves Maryland’s existing law on compensation for wrongfully convicted people, and “Anton’s Law,” which makes most police disciplinary records public. Unfortunately people are unaware of our flawed forensic system. (Columbus, MS) Eddie Lee Howard was exonerated on Friday, January 8, 2021, marking the end of his 26-year fight for innocence. Eddie Lee Howard, Jr., convicted and sentenced to death based on the false forensic testimony of a since disgraced prosecution expert witness, has been exonerated after nearly 26 years on Mississippi ’s death row. Module 8: Case Analysis TITLE: Nitro-Lift Technologies, L.L.C. DNA is fallible and suggestable and should only be used to eliminate bias us rampant in this system as forensics labs work for police and prosecutors and are paid per conviction. Lawmakers passed the New Mexico Civil Rights Act, banning qualified immunity, on Wednesday. However, based on recent analysis of the available records and trial testimony, John Lentini, one of the country’s top arson investigators, concluded that this testimony — specifically the burn time — had “no basis in known data, research or science.” He further explained, “There is no way that any competent fire expert would opine that the fires burned for longer than an hour.” The victim was likely killed within an hour of the fire’s discovery, when Mr. Howard was at his sister’s house with multiple witnesses, each of whom gave consistent versions of Mr. Howard’s whereabouts in the hours before and after the crime. But when Mr. Fabricant questioned him about that statement in 2016, he did not renege on his testimony at Mr. Howard’s murder trial. He then studied the recent Supreme Court decision and thoroughly reviewed and reinvestigated the evidence. © 2021 Innocence Project. His decision not to retry this case is the correct one and finally ends Mr. Howard’s wrongful conviction nightmare. Only about 15 percent of murders committed by Black individuals have white victims, but 31 percent of wrongfully convicted Black murder exonerees were convicted of killing white people. Eddie Lee Howard (Image: Mississippi Department of Corrections) (Jackson, MS – August 31, 2020) – With a new decision from the Mississippi Supreme Court vacating his conviction and death sentence, Eddie Lee Howard, Jr. becomes the thirty-fourth individual wrongfully accused and convicted based on the pseudo-science of bite mark comparison. A bloody knife was found on the bed. Eddie Lee Howard is free after spending more than a quarter of a century behind bars, much of it on Mississippi’s death row. The Mississippi Supreme Court overturned Howard’s conviction in August 2020 (see HoC 27/08/2020). Eddie Lee Howard, Jr., convicted and sentenced to death based on the false forensic testimony of a since disgraced prosecution expert witness, has been exonerated after nearly 26 years on Mississippi’s death row. From the beginning of the case, the Lowndes County police lacked any credible suspects and arrested Mr. Howard without any documented, reasonable suspicion. Mr. Howard, who was freed last month, is now a restaurant worker. Mr. Howard, he said, was doing his best to readjust to life outside of prison, enjoying the things he did not have access to before — fresh sheets, warm baths — and working in a restaurant kitchen. “This is such a bitter sweet victory,” said Tucker Carrington of the Mississippi Innocence Project. But in a statement provided by Mr. Fabricant, Mr. Howard thanked those who had fought for his release. Kemp was found dead in her Columbus, Mississippi, home by firefighters after a … For example, according to the 2017 National Registry of Exonerations report, Race and Wrongful Conviction in the United States, Black defendants are more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder when the victim(s) are white. The expert testimony on bite marks came from Dr. Michael West, a Mississippi dentist who was sought out by prosecutors across the country in the 1980s and 1990s. According to the Associated Press, the now 67-year-old Eddie Lee Howard was convicted of capital murder multiple times in the 1992 stabbing death of 84-year-old Georgia Kemp. Eddie Lee is also a client of @olemisslaw. Eddie Lee spent 26 years on death row in Mississippi for a crime he did not commit. Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from the Innocence Project: Post-conviction DNA tests and alibi witnesses clear Mr. Howard of capital conviction for 1992 Columbus murder. Eddie Lee Howard, Wrongfully Imprisoned For The Killing a White Woman, Exonerated 26 Years on Death Row by Cedric 'BIG CED' Thornton January 14, 2021 January 13, 2021 683 0 ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF OKLAHOMA. “As it started to gain acceptance into the courtroom, nobody was really challenging the scientific validity of it,” said Mary Bush, a professor at the University at Buffalo’s School of Dental Medicine who is an expert in forensic dentistry and bite-mark analysis and served as an expert witness for Mr. Howard in 2016. His case reminds us that there is still much work to be done to support Mr. Howard and others like him who have lost precious years of their lives to wrongful convictions.”. After firefighters extinguished a small fire in the living room, they found Kemp’s body on her bedroom floor. Even Dr. West appears to have questioned their value. Last week, a judge approved a motion by the Lowndes County District Attorney’s Office to dismiss the case. Eddie Lee Howard, Jr., 38, was a logical suspect: He lived two blocks from Kemp and had twice been in prison for sex offenses. The court found that erroneous reliance on bite mark analysis, combined with new DNA testing and a lack of evidence connecting Mr. Howard to the murder, entitled him to a new trial. Mr. Howard had several alibi witnesses at the time of the crime, but at trial, the State used “expert” arson testimony to narrow the timeframe in which the murder could have taken place, undermining Mr. Howard’s alibi evidence. Eddie Lee Howard Is Exonerated After 26 Ye... forensic science and the fairness of the system. The Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a retrial on Thursday for Eddie Lee Howard Jr., who was first sentenced to death in 1994 based largely on bite-mark evidence that has since been discredited. Cnn ) Eddie Lee Howard was locked away at Parchman, a approved! 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