In re Richards

Opinion

KENNARD, J.

At petitioner’s 1997 trial for the murder of his wife, the evidence against him was circumstantial. One of many pieces of evidence linking petitioner to the crime was a postmortem photograph of the victim’s hand, depicting an indistinct, crescent-shaped lesion. The prosecution’s dental expert stated his opinion that the lesion was a human bite mark. And after comparing the bite mark to the distinctive arrangement of petitioner’s lower teeth, the dental expert stated that petitioner’s unusual dentition was consistent with the shape of the mark depicted in the photograph, and…