Flawed Forensic Science Leads to a 33-Year-Long Wrongful Incarceration
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| Keith as a sailor (photo source) |
Newport News
Lying on the southeastern end of the Virginia Peninsula and on the northern shore of the James River, Newport News is the fifth most populous city in Virginia. It's nearly 120 square miles, which includes 50 square miles of water, is divided into segments: Uptown, Northern Newport News and Downtown (also referred to as Southeast Newport News or the East End.) The city has fostered its share of celebrities, including Ella Fitzgerald, author William Styron, and NFL siblings Michael and Marcus Vick.
Newport News is home to Christopher Newport University, as well as Thomas Nelson Community College and The Apprentice School, a trade school operated by Newport News Shipbuilding.
Although one of the city's major industries is aerospace, the military has a huge presence in Newport News. The Army's Fort Eustis, off the busy Jefferson Boulevard and Fort Eustis Boulevard, is home to the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, as well as the U.S. Army Aviation Logistics School and the 7th Transportation Brigade.
Shipbuilding, however, is its largest employer. In fact, Newport News Shipbuilding is the largest industrial employer in the state. The shipyards are located in the southern end of Newport News, where the facilities span more than 550 acres and its location makes it one of the great harbors of the East Coast.
While the shipyards brought many military families to the area, and helped to bolster the economy, the sometimes transient nature of the Navy also brought crime.
Rape and Murder
Jesse and Teresa Perron were an average Newport News family. Twenty-nine year old Jesse worked at the Shipyard as a welder, so the family resided in the 4900 block of Warwick Boulevard in southern Newport News, to be close to the shipyard. They had three children and seemed to have a good, solid existence until September of 1982.
Monday, September 13, 1982 had started out like any other day for twenty-two year old Teresa Perron. She had taken the children swimming, a normal activity, but upon driving away from the pool, a hitchhiker in a Navy uniform cursed at her. Later that day, around 6 p.m., she was hanging clothing in her backyard when she she spotted a man watching her through the back fence. Both occurrences would seem unimportant - until later.
It was after the family had gone to bed that she awoke that night to a loud noise. The loud noise, she discovered, was the sound of an intruder, who was standing by her bed, striking her husband in the head with a crowbar. The man was dressed in a Navy uniform bearing an insignia of three Vs and wearing dog tags around his neck, When he saw that she had awakened, he threw her onto the floor, pinned her legs with his own and continued his murderous assault on Jesse. According to Teresa, he told her that he did not want to kill Jesse, only "knock him out."
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| Jesse Perron as he was found (photo source) |
Once Jesse was unconscious from the blows, the intruder turned to Teresa. He threatened to "get" her children and rape her daughter if she made a sound. She remained quiet over the next several hours while the intruder raped her, with Jesse lying on the bed above her. During the course of the assaults, both Teresa and her attacker each smoked at least one cigarette apiece.
It was around 5 a.m. when the intruder finally fled, after robbing Teresa of some $14 in cash. She called the police, who arrived to find Jesse Perron dead but the children unharmed. The rape kit done at the hospital provided seminal fluid, saliva, and a foreign pubic hair.
At the Perron home, detectives discovered a wealth of physical evidence that included a crowbar, cigarette butt, an empty Pepsi bottle, a baby's diaper, a t-shirt, a towel (all of which were handled by the killer) and strands of his killer's hair found clutched in Jesse's hand.
What would end up being the smoking gun in the case, however, were the bite marks on Teresa's legs, which were photographed at the hospital.
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| Photo source |
Besides the killer's uniform, Teresa had described her assailant as young, white and clean-shaven with sandy hair. She assisted authorities with a sketch. She recalled the events of the day before and while she could not state with certainty that the hitchhiker or the man at the fence was the person who attacked her and killed Jesse, she did feel the man who cursed at her had a voice that sounded like the assailant.
The murder was big news in the Navy town. Donald Wade, a security guard at the Shipyard, heard an evening news report on the crime. He recalled a sailor entering his gate around 2:30 in the morning of September 14, acting strangely and wearing a uniform with what appeared to be blood spatter on it. According to what Mr. Wade told authorities, the sailor was wearing the uniform of an E-3, the rank insignia of which would have three parallel "slash" marks. Although in uniform, the sailor was not in proper attire, as his sleeves were rolled up and he wore no cover (hat). Incidentally, Gate 50, where Wade was stationed and where he noticed the sailor, was very close to the Perron home.
A police tracking dog was brought in and led detectives from the Perron home and through the entry gate where Wade worked and up to the pier where the USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier, was then drydocked. That, along with Teresa's description and Wade's statement, caused investigators to focus on sailors stationed aboard the Carl Vinson. The dental records of all E-3s assigned to the Vinson were submitted and screened by a Navy dentist against the photographs taken of Teresa Perron's legs. From that screening, certain sailors were chosen for additional review. Despite their diligence, none of the sailors' teeth was found to match the bite marks on Teresa. The USS Carl Vinson, with its crew of more than 1,300, left the harbor in December of 1982.
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| Bites on Teresa Perron (photo source) |
Six months passed after Jesse Perron's murder and Teresa Perron's rape with no arrest, no new leads and no viable suspects.
Senators Alfonse D'Amato and Paul Trible each wrote to the Navy, expressing their concerns over how the investigation was handled. Shortly after those letters were penned, a March 1983 domestic dispute caught the attention of the Newport News detectives working on the Perron case. The man involved in the altercation was accused of biting the female. That man immediately became the focus of their investigation.
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| Keith with a former girlfriend (photo source) |
Keith
Keith Allen Harward was 26 years old and a former Navy sailor who had been stationed to the USS Carl Vinson. Before his discharge, he was an E3. He was sandy haired and white, but rather than being clean-shaven he sported a neat mustache. He would later admit that both he and his girlfriend at that time had drinking problems. Keith's dental records had been in the stack that was reviewed by the Navy dentist six months earlier and had been pulled out for further review but he was ultimately ruled out as the person who had assaulted and bitten Teresa Perron.
Detectives brought Teresa to the courtroom where Keith was being arraigned on the domestic charges that were ultimately dismissed, hoping that she could identify him as her assailant. She was unable to do so but investigators thought they had their man. They sent the dental molds off to Dr. Lowell Levine, the New York forensic dentist who had founded the American Board of Forensic Odontology and who had gained fame in the bitemark analysis field by linking bitemarks on a murder victim to serial killer Ted Bundy and linking bitemarks to Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. After an examination, Dr. Levine concluded that Keith Harward had made the bite marks on Teresa Perron. The State then employed local odonatologist Alvin Kagey, also a member of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, to examine and compare the photographs and the dental molds of Keith Harward. Dr. Kagey stated that Keith Harward "is the person that did the biting." The two earlier dentists who had conducted the initial screening and then review of the sailors aboard the Carl Vinson were then asked to reevaluate their findings after being informed of Dr. Levine's conclusion; both did, changing their opinions to match those of Dr. Levine and Dr. Kagey.
Donald Wade was contacted and given a six-photo lineup. He chose Keith from the photos as the sailor he saw enter his gate in the early morning hours of September 14, 1982. Unbeknownst to Keith or his defense counsel, Wade had undergone hypnosis prior to the photo lineup. He not only chose Keith but he also revised the time he had seen the sailor at his gate from 2:30 a.m. to 5 a.m., which corresponded with the time Teresa Perron said her assailant had fled.
Molds were then made of Keith's teeth.
On May 18, 1983, Keith Allen Harward was indicted by the grand jury on charges of capital murder, rape, robbery, and forcible sodomy. That same day he was arrested at his parents' home in Forsyth County, Virginia. Trial was set for October 1983.
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| Keith under arrest (photo source) |
Defense counsel for Keith knew that the bite mark evidence would be central to the prosecution's case and attempted to get their own expert. That expert, dentist Dr. Stanley Schwartz, however, agreed with the conclusions of Dr. Levine and Dr. Kagey that Keith's teeth inflicted the bite marks. Dr. Schwartz was also a founding member of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, Thus, by the start of the trial, the defense had no expert or experts with which to rebut the central argument in the prosecution's case.
During the trial, Keith took the stand in his own defense. A former girlfriend of his testified, not being called by the Commonwealth, but as part of his cross-examination. She attested that Keith had bitten her on several occasions. Donald Wade appeared to identify Keith as the man he had seen entering his gate wearing a bloody uniform. The most damning evidence against him, though, was the bite mark evaluation and identification using the photographs and the dental molds.
Keith was found guilty on all four counts. His life was spared when his parents testified during the penalty phase and begged the jury to spare Keith's life. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Two years later, in 1985, the Virginia Supreme Court reversed Keith's conviction, finding that a rape could only elevate a homicide to capital murder if the person murdered was also the rape victim.
In March of 1986, Keith went to trial for a second time. The Commonwealth presented a nearly identical trial to their first, with both Dr. Levine and Dr. Kagey testifying. Dr. Levine opined that there was a "very, very, very, very high degree of probability" that there were "no discrepancies" between the bitemarks and Keith's teeth, making it "a practical impossibility that someone else would have all these characteristics" that he found in the bite marks. Dr. Kagey told the jury that he could match Keith Harward to the bite mark "with all medical certainty" and that "there is just not anyone else that would have this unique dentition." The Richmond, Virginia-based dentist that Keith's attorney contacted in hopes of offsetting the opinions of Dr. Levine and Dr. Kagey agreed with their analysis.
The prosecution also called serologist David Pomposini from the Commonwealth's forensic lab to the stand. Pomposini testified that the serology results from the rape kit were inconclusive, which neither inculpated nor exculpated Keith. What Pomposini did not share and was not elicited from his testimony was that the secretion samples in the rape kit were consistent with a type O secretor. Teresa Perron was a type B secretor and Keith Harward was a type A secretor, meaning that Keith should have effectively been excluded from the rape kit evidence.
Keith once again testified in his own defense, denying any involvement in the crime. He proved that at the time Teresa Perron saw the man standing in her backyard, he was attending a mandatory Naval alcohol and drug abuse program because he had been caught with marijuana on the ship. He also stated that the insignia on his uniform at the time was three slashes, not the upside down Vs present on the uniforms of higher-ranking petty officers. He also testified, and through photographs, showed that he was not clean-shaven in September of 1982, as Teresa Perron had described her attacker and as Donald Wade had described the sailor entering his gate, but sported a mustache.
On March 6, 1986, Keith Harward was once again found guilty and convicted of murder and rape and once again sentenced to life in prison.
Keith appealed his sentence, arguing that bite mark evidence was not sufficiently reliable but the Court of Appeals ruled that the court in Newport News did not err in allowing the evidence in and denied his appeal. In 1988, the Supreme Court of Virginia refused to review the Court of Appeals' decision.
The Innocence Project and Exoneration
The case appeared to be officially over until Keith learned about The Innocence Project. In 2007, he wrote them a letter, outlining his case and asking for assistance with the opportunity to prove his innocence. It would take seven years but The Innocence Project began to work on his case in 2014.
The first action was to request DNA testing of multiple items recovered from the crime scene, which was done in July 2015 with the permission of the Commonwealth's Attorney. The first round of test results in January of 2016 effectively eliminated Keith as the contributor of semen recovered from the rape kit and from semen stains found on the diaper and the towel handled by the perpetrator. The DNA matched on all of the samples and when uploaded into the National DNA Data Bank pointed to one perpetrator: Jerry Lee Crotty.
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| Jerry Lee Crotty, who got away with rape and murder (photo source) |
Like Keith Harward, Jerry Lee Crotty was a white male with sandy-colored hair stationed aboard the USS Carl Vinson in September of 1982. Crotty had a rap sheet that included burglary and had been imprisoned in Ohio, where he died in 2006, a year after he had plead guilty to a charge of attempting to abduct a woman a year earlier.
The Innocence Project discovered that David Pomposini's bench notes indicated that Keith Harward could have and should have been excluded as the contributor of the samples in the rape kit at the time of trial, as well as the fact that both Teresa Perron and Donald Wade had undergone hypnosis, notoriously unreliable, about events on September 14, 1982.
In March of 2016, Keith filed a petition for a writ of actual innocence with the Supreme Court of Virginia. On April 6, 2016, Mark Herring, the Virginia Attorney General, said that he believed in Keith's innocence. The next day, the Virginia Supreme Court found that no reasonable person would have found proof of Keith's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and ordered his convictions vacated and his record expunged immediately. On April 8, Keith Harward walked out of prison, after spending 33 years locked up for crimes he did not commit.
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| Keith leaves prison a free and exonerated man (photo source) |
In 2017, the Virginia Legislature approved payment of $1.6 million to Keith, with a lump sum of $309,000 and the remaining to go into an annuity.
To date, neither Dr. Levine nor Dr. Kagey has admitted error in Keith's case, taken any responsibility for his conviction or apologized. Since the time of Keith's trials in 1983 and 1986, bite mark evidence has been discredited by the scientific community as "profoundly unreliable" and "insufficient." The Texas Forensic Science Commission undertook a six-month study into the reliability and validity of bite mark evidence and found that there is "no scientific basis for stating that a particular patterned injury can be associated to an individual's dentition."
Despite this, and 28 known wrongful convictions and indictments, no court in the United States has precluded the introduction of bite mark evidence in a criminal trial.
Today, Keith Harward lives out in the country, much like where he grew up, and enjoys spending his time feeding wild birds, something he missed while incarcerated and could only dream about. He misses his parents, who both died while he was in prison. He believes it's his calling to educate people on wrongful convictions and bite mark analysis and hopes to introduce bills that will debunk odontology as credible. He also would like to work to see that fair compensation for exonerees becomes the norm.
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| Keith today (photo source) |
Sources:
Harward v. Commonwealth of Virginia, 364 S.E. 2d 511 (1988).
The Innocence Project (2021). Keith Allen Harward.
The Innocence Project (2021). Description of Bite Mark Exonerations.
The National Registry of Exonerations. (2020). Keith Harward.
Oxygen: True Crime Buzz. (2020) Who is Keith Harward, the Sailor Wrongly Identified as a Vicious Rapist and Killer.
The United States Department of Justice. Commonwealth v. Keith Allen Harward Summary.
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