Charles McCrory, convicted in 1985 of murdering his wife in Andalusia, Alabama, remains in prison after a federal judge vacated his conviction, citing junk forensic science.
Federal Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. ruled on September 21 that bite-mark analysis is "grossly unreliable and unsupported by relevant scientific bodies" and amounts to "nothing more than rank speculation." He ordered McCrory's release unless Alabama retries him within six months.
McCrory was 26 when accused of brutally killing his wife, Julie Bond McCrory, whose body was found with head injuries and stab wounds on May 31, 1985. Police found no physical evidence connecting McCrory to the crime. The conviction rested solely on small indentations on the victim's arm that a prosecution expert, forensic dentist Richard Souviron, claimed matched McCrory's teeth.
Souviron recanted his testimony in 2019, stating he no longer believed teeth-marks comparison was scientifically valid. Despite this, the Alabama attorney general's office filed a motion last week asking Huffaker to reconsider vacating the conviction, effectively keeping McCrory imprisoned pending the state's decision to retry or release him.
Mark Loudon-Brown of the Southern Center for Human Rights and Chris Fabricant of the Innocence Project, McCrory's current attorneys, praised Huffaker's ruling. Bite-mark analysis has been exposed as junk science linked to dozens of wrongful convictions, including at least four cases where Souviron served as the prosecution's expert.