Murder case hinges on accuracy of bite mark Bite-mark expert testifies at Steve Fortin trial BY KATHY CHANG Staff Writer In the end, the 11-man, five-woman jury sitting in Middlesex County will have to decide if Steven Fortin's teeth impressions could be the marks that were left on Melissa Padilla's chin and left breast. Fortin, who is now 43 years old, is being retried on capital murder charges for the 1994 robbery, sexual assault and strangulation of Melissa Padilla, 25, after she picked up some food for her four young children (ages 2 to 5) around 11 p.m. from Quick Chek on Route 1 in the Avenel section of Woodbridge. Padilla's body was discovered naked from the waist down in a concrete pipe alongside Route 1. Her face and head had been brutally beaten, resulting in a broken nose; she had been sexually assaulted and had bite marks on her chin and left breast, and she had been strangled to death. Police had exhausted all of their leads and the case remained unsolved until the Maine State Police contacted Woodbridge Township police in April 1995, inquiring about Fortin because he was a township resident at the time. He was under investigation for an assault of a Maine state trooper. Fortin pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced in November 1995 to 20 years in a Maine prison. Fortin was found guilty of Padilla's murder and was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2000. However, the New Jersey State Supreme Court in a 4-2 decision overturned the conviction and death sentence of Fortin in February 2004. The court decided that the decision to allow the testimony by Robert Hazelwood, a former FBI agent, in the original trial concerning linkage analysis lacked sufficient scientific reliability to establish that the same perpetrator committed the Maine and New Jersey crimes. Police did not uncover any forensic evidence linking Fortin to the Padilla murder. Dr. Lowell J. Levine, a forensic odontologist (dentist) and co-director of operations for the New York State Police Forensic Sciences Unit, testified on Nov. 13 for the prosecution that the bite marks made on Padilla's chin were consistent and could have been made by Fortin's upper front teeth. Levine has also served as a consultant to the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission investigating the MOVE conflagration and the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory identifying MIAs of Vietnam; participated in the medical-legal investigation of the sailors killed on the USS Stark as well as the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Levine, who did not see Fortin's teeth when examining the potential bite marks left on Padilla, noted that there were spaces on the mark left on her chin. Photos of Fortin's upper and lower teeth were shown to the jury. The photo of Fortin's upper teeth shows a space between his two front teeth. Levine also testified that if Padilla's arm had been raised when the bite occurred on her left outer breast, "there was a high probability within reasonable scientific certainty" that Fortin's lower teeth made the mark. "However, if her arm was not raised, I can't be certain with high probability that it was caused by Fortin's lower arch," he said. Assistant Middlesex County Prosecutor Christie Bevacqua placed a transparency of Fortin's lower teeth over the marks made on Padilla's left breast and asked the doctor if it was a mirror image. "It's pretty accurate," he said. Levine also studied colored photographs of the marks left on the Maine state trooper; however, he relayed to the jury that it is harder to observe marks made on a living victim than a dead victim. "The wounds on a living person heal," he said. Levine said he could not say scientifically that Fortin's teeth caused the mark left on the trooper's left breast, but he could not exclude Fortin's teeth. The doctor observed from photographs that there was a bite mark on the trooper's chin. "[The person] taking the photographs didn't appreciate that it was a bite mark," said Levine. "So there weren't rulers measuring the mark. The photographs were meant to show the marks left on the trooper's neck." Dr. Norman Sperber, the forensic odontologist who has a private general practice in California and also is the chief forensic dentist for the California Department of Justice, testified for the defense on Nov. 14 that the bite marks found on Padilla's chin and left breast could not be Fortin's teeth. Sperber has testified to forensic evidence in more than 215 trials and has examined evidence in the Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer cases. He also spent time at ground zero, helping identify the victims of the 911 terrorist attacks. "The tracing of his [Fortin's] teeth doesn't even come close to the [lesion]," said Sperber, who said in his opinion that Fortin is excluded from being the one who left the bite marks to Padilla's chin and left breast. Sperber testified that bite-mark analysis has its limitations and is not as reliable as dental identification, DNA, or fingerprinting analysis. "Skin is a serious limitation for bitemark analysis because it rebounds and is moveable," he said. "Bite-mark analysis is not a true science." The prosecution and the defense cited cases that even though the forensic odontologist testified that the suspect's teeth matched the bite mark left on the victim, DNA proved that those suspects were wrongly convicted. Sperber testified that he couldn't be sure that teeth left the mark on Padilla's left breast because he couldn't see spaces of teeth. "I can't be sure because I don't see individual rectangles of teeth; [the lesion is a] contiguous [mark]," he said. Bevacqua asked the doctor if teeth were so close together [like Fortin's lower bottom teeth], wouldn't he expect to not see characteristics of teeth? "Yes, that is a fair statement," he said. Bevacqua questioned why Sperber testified there was a similarity between the mark left on Padilla's outer left breast and Fortin's teeth in the original trial, and in this trial he was testifying that Fortin's teeth were excluded. "When I said similar, it doesn't mean that it is a positive identification of [who left the mark]," he said. The prosecution and defense will make their closing arguments Nov. 27.