Eddie Lee Howard

The Crime

At about 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 2, 1992, smoke was spotted rising from the home of 84-year-old Georgia Kemp in Columbia, Mississippi. After extinguishing a small fire in the living room, firefighters found Ms. Kemp’s body on her bedroom floor. A bloody knife was on the bed. A telephone was off the receiver. The line had been cut.

The Investigation

The following day, Dr. Steven Hayne performed an autopsy. He concluded that Ms. Kemp had been beaten, strangled, stabbed, and raped. He found bruises and scrapes on Ms. Kemp’s face, head, neck, and left shin. Dr. Hayne noted injuries consistent with forced vaginal penetration and injuries consistent with manual strangulation. He said the cause of death was two stab wounds to the left side of her chest.

On Feb. 6, 1992, Dr. Hayne requested an additional examination of the body because he believed that there “could be injuries inflicted by teeth,” even though the autopsy report and associated notes reflected no sign of such injuries.

On Feb. 7, 1992, after Ms. Kemp’s body was exhumed, Dr. Michael West, a forensic odontologist, examined Ms. Kemp’s body. Using an ultraviolet light, he concluded there were human bite marks on Ms. Kemp’s right breast, the right side of her neck, and her right arm.

Although the police did not have an arrest warrant, they picked up 38-year-old Eddie Lee Howard Jr., who lived near Ms. Kemp and had a prior conviction. They took him to a dentist’s office and impressions were made of his teeth. 

On Feb. 8, Dr. West said the marks on Ms. Kemp’s neck and arm were “consistent with” Mr. Howard’s teeth. Dr. West said the mark on Ms. Kemp’s right breast was “indeed and without a doubt inflicted by…Mr. Howard.” 

Mr. Howard was arrested that day. He denied involvement in the crime. He told the police that he had been at a gathering with family and friends starting around 5 p.m. — more than three hours before Ms. Kemp’s body was found — and that he was still there as late as 10 p.m. — well after Ms. Kemp’s body was discovered. A number of people, including his mother, were interviewed by law enforcement and corroborated Mr. Howard’s account. 

Five days later, on Feb. 13, Mr. Howard asked to speak with Detective David Turner “as soon as possible” regarding the case. Detective Turner later said that Mr. Howard said that “the case was solved.” Mr. Howard added that he had “a temper and that’s why this happened.” Mr. Howard also said that others were involved and that Detective Turner should keep investigating.

Biological evidence, including a rape kit, blood samples from Ms. Kemp and Mr. Howard, blood-stained sheets and clothing, pubic hair combings from Ms. Kemp and Mr. Howard, the bloody knife, and Ms. Kemp’s fingernail scrapings were submitted to the crime laboratory for testing. At that time, the crime laboratory was not performing DNA testing, and samples of the evidence were not sent to any other laboratory for DNA testing. 

The crime laboratory tested the rape kit, but no seminal fluid was found. The laboratory examined latent fingerprints but only found Ms. Kemp’s fingerprints. The laboratory also tested various items for blood type, but all of the items tested were consistent with Ms. Kemp’s blood type and inconsistent with Mr. Howard’s. 

On Aug. 19, 1992, a Lowndes County grand jury indicted Mr. Howard on a charge of capital murder. The grand jury charged that the murder occurred during the course of a rape.

The Trial

In the months leading up to Mr. Howard’s trial in 1994, he was represented by Richard Burdine. In February 1993, Mr. Burdine was replaced by Douglas Stone. Five weeks before the trial, Mr. Stone dropped out. By that time, neither lawyer had filed a motion to challenge the bite mark evidence or the statements made to Detective Turner. Nor had either lawyer consulted with an expert on bite mark evidence.

The trial judge had ordered a mental evaluation after Mr. Burdine said Mr. Howard was unable to “intelligently communicate with his attorney or anyone else.” Although Mr. Howard was taken to the hospital and an interview was not completed, the physician assigned to conduct the assessment concluded that Mr. Howard “appears to have sufficient mental ability to consult with an attorney with a reasonable degree of rational understanding.” The report said that Mr. Howard was not suffering from “any major mental disorder.”

About five weeks before trial, Mr. Howard said he wanted to represent himself. The judge granted that request and appointed lawyers Thomas Kesler and Armstrong Walters to serve as standby counsel. No pretrial motions were filed.

The trial began on May 9, 1994, in Lowndes County Circuit Court. Mr. Howard did not object to any prospective jurors. He did object when the prosecutor offered to protect Mr. Howard’s interest by challenging some jurors. These included the wife of a Columbus police officer who had discussed the case and admitted she could not be impartial; a woman who had been raped; and William Coleman, whose son-in-law was the police officer in charge of the investigation that resulted in Mr. Howard’s arrest. Mr. Howard’s objections to the jurors were sustained. Mr. Coleman became the foreman of the jury that convicted Mr. Howard just a few days later.

The prosecution relied primarily on the testimony of Dr. West and his conclusion that there were bite marks on Ms. Kemp’s body that were made by Mr. Howard’s teeth. One of the marks, Dr. West testified, was a “positive match” to Mr. Howard’s dentition. There was no evidence presented relating to blood or semen to link Mr. Howard to the rape. Evidence of the bruises and scrapes was presented. 

Mr. Howard did not object, though at one point, he said Dr. West was engaging in “hocus-pocus stuff.”

Kayfen Fulgham, Mr. Howard’s former girlfriend and the mother of his adult child, testified that she saw Mr. Howard after the crime was discovered. She said he smelled of smoke. She characterized it as not like cigarette smoke, but “like burnt clothes or something, you know, wood, like smoke.” Fulgham also testified that Mr. Howard liked to bite her on the neck and breast when they had sexual intercourse. 

Mr. Howard conducted his own cross-examination of the witnesses and rarely touched on the evidence. An appeals brief later noted that Mr. Howard rarely questioned anyone directly, preferring instead “to propound asides to them, much as in a Shakespearean play.”

At one point, Mr. Howard’s standby lawyers urged the judge to reconsider Mr. Howard’s competency. The trial judge declined to revisit the issue.

During Mr. Howard’s closing argument, he said that his own family members had killed Ms. Kemp and were framing him. He also suggested that one of the jurors might have committed the crime.

On May 12, 1994, the jury convicted Mr. Howard of capital murder after deliberating for about 35 minutes. During a one-hour sentencing hearing, Mr. Howard presented no evidence. 

The jury deliberated 90 minutes and voted to sentence him to death.

In June 1997, the Mississippi Supreme Court set aside the conviction and ordered a new trial. The court ruled that the trial court should have held a competency hearing. The court also ruled that the trial judge had erred when he declined Mr. Howard’s request that his standby attorneys deliver the closing argument. 

The court did not address the defense’s argument that bite mark evidence was “constitutionally unreliable.” The court said that if such evidence was offered, “it should be open” to a defendant to challenge it.

In dissent, Justice James Smith argued that the court should have ruled that bite mark evidence was admissible and that Dr. West was “imminently (sic) qualified” as a bite mark expert.

Prior to a retrial, Mr. Howard was found to be mentally competent. He went to trial a second time on May 22, 2000, and was represented by attorneys. The trial was a virtual replay of the first trial with a couple of exceptions. 

Columbus Fire Department Lieutenant George Bass, an arson investigator, testified that the fire had smoldered for as long as four to six hours and could have been started as early as 2 p.m., undermining Mr. Howard’s alibi, which placed him at the family gathering around 5 p.m.

Dr. West again testified he had matched Mr. Howard’s teeth to the invisible bite marks on Ms. Kemp’s body. 

The defense called no witnesses. The defense told the trial judge they had consulted with Dr. Richard Souviron, another odontology expert prior to the trial, and that Dr. Souviron told them that he would probably concur with Dr. West. Dr. Souviron, who had attracted acclaim as an expert after his testimony about bite marks contributed to the conviction of serial killer Ted Bundy in 1978, would later, during post-conviction proceedings, claim the defense had falsely represented his position. In an affidavit, he said he would not have offered an opinion unless subpoenaed and that he had given adverse opinions on Dr. West in the past.

On May 25, 2000, the jury convicted Mr. Howard of capital murder. He was again sentenced to death.

In 2003, the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction. The court again rejected a defense challenge to the bite mark evidence. 

The Exoneration

In August 2003, the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel was appointed to represent Mr. Howard. A petition for post-conviction relief subsequently was filed that raised numerous issues, including the failure of the trial defense lawyers to call an expert witness to challenge Dr. West’s bite mark testimony.

That petition was denied and in September 2006, the Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the denial ruling.

In 2015, Mr. Howard was granted permission to file an amended post-conviction petition. The petition claimed that over the previous decade, the field of bite mark identification had “devolved from a favored forensic science…to a craft of forensic charlatanism. It has proved to be completely unreliable, inadmissible, and little more than speculation.”

At an evidentiary hearing in 2016, Mr. Howard’s legal team included Tucker Carrington from the Mississippi Innocence Project, as well as Innocence Project lawyers Vanessa Potkin, M. Chris Fabricant, Peter Neufeld, and Dana Delger. They presented evidence that Ms. Kemp’s nightgown tested negative for semen and no male DNA was found at all on the nightgown. Similarly, no male semen or male DNA was found on Ms. Kemp’s stockings or slippers. Tests conducted on the rape kit and the bedding were negative for semen or male DNA. Tests on Ms. Kemp’s fingernail scrapings were negative for male DNA.

Tests on the knife revealed male DNA, but Mr. Howard was excluded, suggesting that the unidentified male DNA belonged to the person who committed the crime. Significantly, Mr. Howard’s DNA was not found in any areas where he was alleged to have bitten Ms. Kemp.

The defense also called Dr. Iain Pretty, a forensic odontologist; Dr. Mary Bush, a professor of restorative dentistry; and Christopher Plourd, a California Superior Court judge. All three testified that the American Board of Forensic Odontology (ABFO) had revised its guidelines such that Dr. West’s testimony would not have been admissible. 

Dr. Pretty discredited Dr. West’s testimony, saying that new research showed that an expert could not reliably distinguish a human bite mark from other injuries. Dr. Pretty said there were no visible bite marks on Ms. Kemp, and that the exhuming and embalming of the body had a negative impact on the ability to assess an injury. He said Dr. West’s claim that he could see bite marks under ultraviolet light was “questionable.”

Judge Plourd testified that in 2001, while he was still a criminal defense attorney, he administered a blind proficiency test to Dr. West. Judge Plourd said he created a mock case with a mock suspect. He sent dental models and a bite mark for analysis, knowing that the teeth that made the models had not made the bite mark. Dr. West “failed the proficiency test” by identifying the models as matching the bite mark, Judge Plourd testified.

In October 2018, the trial court denied the motion for postconviction relief.

On Aug. 27, 2020, the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed that ruling, vacated Mr. Howard’s conviction, and ordered a new trial.

While the case was being reviewed by the district attorney to determine whether to take the case to trial for a third time, John Lentini, an arson expert, reviewed the evidence relating to testimony about the smoldering fire. Mr. Lentini contradicted the prosecution’s arson expert that the fire smoldered from four to six hours before firefighters arrived — testimony that had diminished the importance of Mr. Howard’s alibi about being at the gathering of family and friends. 

On Dec. 4, 2020, Mr. Howard was released pending a retrial. On Jan. 7, 2021, the prosecution dismissed the case. Mr. Howard subsequently filed a claim for compensation with the state of Mississippi and was awarded $400,000.