Our system of criminal justice is designed to seek to prove that a defendant charged with a crime is in fact guilty under the law and in accord with sworn evidence, as judged by an impartial and unanimous jury, before he is sentenced and put in prison.
But mistakes can occur, despite efforts to seek “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”
In the mid-1980s, in Milwaukee, 21-year-old Robert Lee Stinson was convicted of murdering a woman whose beaten body had been found near her home.
A defendant is not supposed to have to prove that he is “not guilty.” Rather, the prosecution is supposed to prove the defendant is “guilty.”
Stinson couldn’t establish where he had been at the time of the victim’s death, however. There were tooth marks on the victim’s body. Two forensic odontologists – supposedly experts in dealing with dental evidence – testified that Stinson’s teeth matched the tooth marks on the victim.