Sheila Denton

The Crime

On May 21, 2004, the body of 73-year-old Eugene Garner was found lying on the floor of his bedroom in Waycross, Georgia. Neighbors called the police after entering his house, seeing signs of a struggle, and smelling natural gas. 

Police noticed that all of the gas stove burners were on, but the pilot lights were extinguished. Once the house cleared of gas, Mr. Garner’s body was removed. His pockets had been turned out of his pants. 

An autopsy revealed that Mr. Garner died from manual strangulation and extensive blunt force trauma. An injury on his right forearm was characterized as a bite mark. His body had been doused with a liquid chemical. 

The Investigation

Thirty-seven-year-old Sheila Denton became a suspect after she was arrested at midnight on the day Mr. Garner’s body was found and gave police a false name. Police determined that Mr. Denton knew Mr. Garner because she had delivered food to his house. Mr. Garner was commonly believed at the time to keep large amounts of cash in his house. 

Police subsequently picked up Sharon Jones, who admitted to having a crack cocaine addiction and was a crack cocaine dealer. During an interrogation, Ms. Jones initially denied any knowledge of the crime. However, when she was threatened with being charged with the murder, she claimed Ms. Denton had confessed to the crime. 

On Aug. 13, 2004, Ms. Denton was indicted on charges of malice murder, felony murder, and giving a false name to the police. 

The Trial

In March 2006, Ms. Denton went to trial in Ware County Superior Court. The prosecution’s primary evidence was testimony from Dr. Thomas David, a forensic odontologist. 

Dr. David testified “to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty” that a bite mark had been found on Ms. Denton’s left arm and a bite mark had been found on Ms. Garner’s right forearm. Dr. David said “to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty” that it was probable that Ms. Denton left the bite mark on Mr. Garner and that it was probable that Mr. Garner left the bite mark on Ms. Denton. 

An analyst from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Division of Forensic Sciences testified that she had examined hairs that were found in Mr. Garner’s hand. The analyst said that the hair belonged to Mr. Garner. She said no hair associated with Ms. Denton was found at the scene. 

Ms. Jones testified that at 4:30 a.m. on some day in May 2004, Ms. Denton came to the crack house where Ms. Jones had about $500 worth of crack cocaine. When Ms. Denton first came to the door, according to Ms. Jones, Ms. Denton said, “I did something.” Ms. Jones said that Ms. Denton had cuts and scratches on her arms and legs. Ms. Jones testified that she asked, “What’s wrong with you? What happened?”

Ms. Jones said that Ms. Denton replied, “I just killed the man that stay in front of Wally’s,” referring to a convenience store across the highway from Mr. Garner’s residence. Ms. Jones said that Ms. Denton, who typically had little money, bought $300 worth of crack cocaine and left. 

Ms. Jones testified that she didn’t believe Ms. Denton, believing that Ms. Denton had fallen in some bushes. 

Ms. Jones admitted that she implicated Ms. Denton only after police officers “kept saying I did it.” She said the police told her they had found her fingerprints in Mr. Garner’s home and that they had a videotape of her in the home. Ms. Jones said she knew that wasn’t true, but the officers threatened to put her in jail. 

The prosecutor conceded during his closing argument that if not for the bite mark testimony, he “would have to admit that’s reasonable doubt” in the case. 

On March 15, 2006, the jury acquitted Ms. Denton of malice murder, and convicted her of felony murder and giving a false name to the police. She was sentenced to life in prison plus one year. 

Ms. Denton appealed, arguing that Ms. Jones was not a credible witness because of the amount of crack cocaine she was smoking at that time, the tricks and lies the police officers told to get her to talk to them, and contradictions between her trial testimony and her statements to police officers. 

In February 2010, the Georgia Supreme Court rejected these arguments and affirmed the convictions and sentence. 

The Exoneration

In November 2017, Mark Loudon-Brown and Katherine Moss, attorneys from the Southern Center for Human Rights, filed an extraordinary motion for a new trial. The motion asserted that Dr. David’s testimony at the trial was no longer valid. 

The motion was based in part on advancements in the scientific understanding of bite mark evidence, changes in the American Board of Forensic Odontology (ABFO) Guidelines, and new opinions from two other forensic odontologists that demonstrated that the bite mark evidence in the case could not affirmatively link Ms. Denton the murder.

In addition, the motion said that Dr. David’s opinions on bite mark evidence had evolved as well. The motion said that in April 2016, following the change in the ABFO Guidelines, Dr. David had authored an affidavit in a bite mark case in Pennsylvania. In that case, he had testified at the 1991 trial of John Kunco and linked Mr. Kunco to an injury that Dr. David said was a bite mark. 

In his affidavit in that case, Dr. David had said that the “scientific knowledge and understanding on which these conclusions were based, however, has changed significantly,” and that he “would not proffer such testimony, since it is inconsistent with the current ABFO Guidelines and with current scientific understanding of the limitations of bite mark comparison.” 

The motion said that during an evidentiary hearing in the Kunco case, Dr. David had modified his opinion in light of the changes in scientific understanding of bite mark evidence as was reflected in the new ABFO Guidelines. He had changed his opinion from the highest level of certainty that the injury was a bite mark to “cannot exclude.” 

In May 2018, Waycross County Chief Superior Court Judge Dwayne H. Gillis held a hearing on Ms. Denton’s case.

Dr. David testified, as did Dr. Cynthia Brzozowski and Dr. Adam Freeman—all of whom were board-certified by the ABFO. The defense also presented two affidavits co-authored by five board-certified ABFO odontologists. Each of the experts agreed that any testimony regarding the bite marks, based on the current science, would no longer be incriminating. 

Dr. David admitted that if he testified at Ms. Denton’s trial based on the recent advancements in science, his testimony would have been different. 

Dr. Brzozowski testified that at the time of Ms. Denton’s trial, the testimony given by Dr. David was permissible. However, by 2019, saying that an injury was probably a bite mark was no longer a permitted conclusion by ABFO guidelines. 

“He [Mr. David] testified that Ms. Denton was the probable biter of Mr. Garner and that Mr. Garner was the probable biter of Ms. Denton. And today we would not testify as to a probabilistic association,” Dr. Brzozowski said. She said she had reviewed photographs of the injuries and concluded there was “insufficient evidence to determine that either of these injuries are human bite marks.” 

Dr. Freeman testified that under the current AFBO guidelines, Dr. David’s trial testimony concerning probability would be “a misrepresentation of what the underlying science supports.” He said that in his opinion, neither injury was a bite mark at all. 

On Feb. 7, 2020, Ms. Denton’s 2006 murder conviction was reversed with assistance from the Innocence Project. Prosecutors chose not to appeal an emergency motion to release her in light of the court’s decision and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The defense testimony and evidence in this case is profound and leads one to conclude that bite mark evidence is no longer a valid subject of scientific inquiry unless it can exonerate one or exclude a particular person,” Judge Gillis wrote in reversing the conviction. 

On April 8, 2020, more than 15 years after her arrest, Ms. Denton was released pending a retrial. 

On Sept. 9, 2026, Ware County Superior Court Judge J. Kelly Brooks dismissed the case, declaring, “[T]he State does not believe there is sufficient evidence likely to obtain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.” 

Judge Brooks noted that without the bite mark evidence, the only evidence linking Ms. Denton to the murder was the testimony of Ms. Jones. The judge said that Ms. Jones “was effectively impeached at trial and had highly dubious credibility.”