Case type
Forensic odontology expert reports.
Dental evidence for criminal proceedings — identification, age estimation, and the interpretation of injury to the mouth and face.
What the discipline covers
Forensic odontology is several distinct activities, not one.
The separate activities do not share a common evidential footing. Treating them as one discipline is how forensic dental evidence goes wrong.
Identification of the deceased is well established and comparative. Age estimation from dental development is reliable within stated margins, provided the margins are stated. Interpretation of injury to the mouth and face is a defensible clinical question. Bite-mark identification, the attribution of a mark on skin to a particular person’s dentition, is not, and we say so below rather than leave it among a list of services.
The activities
What forensic odontology covers.
Identification of the deceased
By comparison of dental records with post-mortem findings. Well established, and comparative rather than probabilistic.
Age estimation
From dental development, most often where a person’s claimed age is disputed. Reliable within margins that must be stated.
Injury interpretation
Whether a mark is consistent with a human bite at all, and whether an injury pattern fits the account given.
Bite-mark identification
Attributing a mark on skin to a particular person’s dentition. We do not offer it, for the reasons set out below.
Where we are instructed
Different forums. A method stated with its limits.
Defence solicitors instruct us to test the reliability of forensic dental evidence relied on by the prosecution. The prosecution instructs us on identification and injury interpretation. Family proceedings may require evidence where injury to a child’s mouth is in issue, and age-disputed cases where dental development bears on the assessment.
Whichever forum and whichever party, the report states the method used, its known limitations and the confidence that can properly be attached to the conclusion.
The expert we match
Expertise matched to the forensic question.
Forensic odontology
For identification, age estimation and the interpretation of injury to the mouth.
Oral and maxillofacial surgery
Where the question concerns the mechanism or consequence of facial trauma.
Why solicitors instruct us
Evidence that will survive scrutiny in the witness box.
We state the limits of the method
An expert who does not tell you what their technique cannot establish is a liability under cross-examination.
We decline what we cannot support
Bite-mark identification is the clearest example. A refusal is worth more to a defence solicitor than a confident opinion that will not survive scrutiny.
A named case manager
One point of contact coordinates the instruction from first enquiry through to delivery of the report.
FAQs
Commonly asked questions
The scientific foundations of bite-mark identification have been criticised by the National Academy of Sciences and by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and the technique is associated with wrongful convictions in the United States. We do not offer bite-mark identification.
Often, yes. That is injury interpretation, and it is a different question from attributing the bite to a particular person.
It is accurate within margins that vary with the age range and the method. A report that gives an age without a margin should be treated with caution.
Comparison of ante-mortem records with post-mortem findings, yes. Identification work is generally commissioned by the coroner or the police rather than by a solicitor.
Discuss an instruction