10/16/07 (MO):
Discredited Dentist Leads To Retrial
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A woman convicted of first-degree murder more than a decade ago based on faulty bite-mark testimony will get a second chance before a jury. Carol Ege is accused of stabbing and disemboweling Cindy Thompson, 26, one night in February 1984, in Thompson's home.
Thompson, police and prosecutors contend, was seven months pregnant with a child belonging to Ege's long time boyfriend. Ege, they say, killed Thompson in a jealous rage. She was convicted in 1994 and sent to prison for life.
But in 2005 a federal judge ordered a new trial. U.S. District Judge David Lawson found that the expert prosecution testimony of a dentist, who told jurors that bruising on the victim's face was very likely a bite mark left by Ege, was inherently unreliable.
Dentist Allan Warnick testified that Ege's teeth patterns so closely matched the bite mark on Thompson that, "In my expert opinion, nobody else would match up" among metro Detroit's 3.5 million residents. Jurors, in published reports after the guilty verdict, said the bite-mark testimony convinced them Ege was at the scene. No other physical evidence placed her there. But the dentist, both before and in the years after Ege's conviction, has been discredited by other forensic dentists who examined his work and found his conclusions unreliable. Ege's case is the sixth murder or rape case overturned or dropped based on Warnick's involvement.
In ordering a new trial for Ege, now 50, Judge Lawson noted Warnick has been "thoroughly cast into disrepute as an expert witness."
Ege's attorney, Carole Stanyar, who has been fighting to free Ege for more than 10 years, said Monday, "She has been waiting a long time for this trial. She is looking forward to proving her innocence."
Thompson's family members say they are heartbroken and angry that Ege will get a new trial, and continue to believe in her guilt. They note that prosecutors also presented witnesses at her first trial who told jurors Ege had been threatening to harm Thompson in the weeks and months leading up to the killing.
"It was absolutely the most terrible news that we could have heard, " said Thompson's sister, Loraine Beydoun, who is traveling from out of state to attend the trial, along with other relatives.
Jury selection is to begin today before Oakland County Circuit Judge Edward Sosnick.
© X-Pro 2007
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