Bitemarks 327these cases is that of Kennedy Brewer in Mississippi. Brewer was convicted in
1995 of the murder and sexual assault of Christine Jackson. The body of the
three-year-old victim had been found in a nearby creek on a Tuesday morn-
ing, the third day after her Saturday night disappearance. The prosecution’s
dental expert, Dr. Michael West, examined Christine Jackson on May 9, 1992,
and wrote in his May 14, 1992, report that nineteen human bitemarks were
found on the body, and that “the bitemarks found on the body of Christina
[sic] Jackson are peri-mortem in nature.” “The bitemarks found on the body
of Christina [sic] Jackson were indeed and without doubt inflected [sic] by
Kennedy Brewer.”^30
Five days is a very short time period for examining, analyzing, and com-
paring nineteen patterned injuries. Dr. West later testified that “indeed and
without doubt” and that “to a reasonable degree of medical certainty” the
teeth of Mr. Brewer made five of those marks, and that it was “highly con-
sistent and probable that the other fourteen bite mark patterns were also
inflicted by Brewer” (West in original trial transcript in Brewer v. State^31 )
(Figures 14.19 to 14.22). The defense expert, Dr. R. Souviron, testified that the
patterned injuries on the body were not human bites at all but were patterns
that were made by other means. “There could be insect activity there. There
could be fish activity or turtle activity or who—God knows what” (Souviron
in original trial transcript in Brewer v. State^31 ). The jury convicted Mr. Brewer
and he was sentenced to death. Appeals were denied until a 2007 analysis of
the victim’s vaginal swabs containing spermatozoa indicated the DNA pro-
files of two men. Neither profile included Brewer but did point to another
man, Justin Albert Johnson, who, ironically, had also been an early suspect
in Jackson’s murder. Johnson later confessed to killing Christine Jackson and
another young girl who had been similarly sexually assaulted and murdered.
In that earlier case, Levon Brooks had also been wrongly convicted based, in
part, on Dr. West’s bitemark testimony conclusion. He testified that “it could
be no one else but Levon Brooks that bit this girl’s arm.”^32 If Johnson, the con-
fessed killer of both, had been arrested and convicted of that earlier murder,
Christine Jackson could be alive today.
How can this have happened? How can an “expert” ignore the circum-
stances and disregard the crime scene information? How can patterns with
no class or individual characteristics of human teeth in patterned injuries
found on a body that had been in water for more than two days be judged
to be human bitemarks? To then associate those patterns to a suspect with
any level of certainty seems unthinkable. Perhaps, an understanding of alter-
native explanations to human teeth causing the marks should have been
considered more seriously, especially in a case in which human bitemarks
seemed unlikely. In fact, Dr. Souviron provided viable and testable theories
for possible alternatives—the marks may have come from activity by insects,
fish, turtles, or other sources not readily apparent. There is ample evidence