States should adopt the federal rule that keeps junk science out of criminal courts

After 37 years behind bars, Robert Wallace Lyons, convicted of murdering Lori Stabenow in a Eugene, Ore. motel room, has been released from prison. Though he is not yet a free man in the fullest sense, prosecutors are deciding whether to retry him.

In 1990, a Lane County jury found Lyons guilty of killing Stabenow, who was discovered strangled in her room at the Stage Stop Inn. The case against him relied heavily on bitemark evidence, a forensic technique whereby an expert compares marks on a victim’s body to a suspect’s teeth. Once widely accepted in courtrooms, this methodology has since been debunked due to its failure to produce scientifically reliable results.

In Lyons’s case, bitemark evidence was the centerpiece of the state’s case. A forensic odontologist testified he had no doubt that marks found on Stabenow’s body matched wax molds made from Lyons’ teeth. That testimony helped secure a conviction that stood for decades until Oregon passed a law this year formally recognizing bitemark analysis as a discredited forensic discipline. That opened the door for Lyons and others convicted on similar evidence to challenge their cases.

As forensic science has evolved, bitemark evidence and the “direct comparison” methodology used by forensic dentists have since been widely rejected, raising serious questions about convictions that relied on such........

© The Hill