Professor Imwinkelried Signs Brief in California Supreme Court Evidence Case

Professor Edward Imwinkelried was one of the signatories to an amicus brief submitted to the California Supreme Court in Richardson v. Fox and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in mid-June. 

The proceeding is a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, posing the question of the admissibility of bite-mark identification testimony by forensic odontologists.  In its 2009 report, the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science was highly critical of such testimony,  which many courts have continued to admit. 

The amicus brief surveys the pertinent empirical studies and urges the California Supreme Court to limit the admissibility of such testimony.  The amici include scientists, statisticians, and evidence scholars specializing in scientific testimony.  Professor Imwinkelried is the coauthor of Scientific Evidence (5th ed. 2012) and the author of The Methods of Attacking Scientific Evidence (5th ed. 2014).