Expert discipline
Forensic odontologist expert witnesses
Dental evidence for criminal and coronial proceedings, with the limits of each method stated.
What the discipline covers
Several distinct activities, not one.
Area of practice
Forensic odontologist
A registered dentist with additional forensic training and experience. There is no specialist list, so the quality of that experience is what a solicitor should be examining.
Common instructionIdentification, age estimation and injury interpretation.
Method and its limits
Distinct activities
The activities do not share a common evidential footing, and each carries its own limitations. Bite-mark identification, the attribution of a mark to a person, is not evidentially defensible.
Common instructionA method stated with its known limits, not overstated.
Instruction scope
What these experts report on.
Identification of the deceased
By comparing dental records with post-mortem findings. Well established and comparative.
Age estimation
From dental development, within margins that must be stated.
Injury interpretation
Whether a mark is consistent with a human bite at all, and whether a pattern fits the account given.
Bite-mark identification
Attributing a mark on skin to a particular person’s dentition. We do not offer it.
How we match
The forensic question sets the expert.
A forensic odontologist for identification, age estimation and injury interpretation. An oral and maxillofacial surgeon where the question is the mechanism or consequence of facial trauma rather than its interpretation.
Where a mark on skin is in issue, we report on whether it is consistent with a human bite, and decline to attribute it to a named person.
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01
Identification and interpretation
Forensic odontologist
For identification, age estimation and the interpretation of injury to the mouth.
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02
Facial trauma
Oral and maxillofacial surgeon
Where the question is the mechanism or consequence of facial trauma.
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03
Bite-mark identification
Declined
We report whether a mark is consistent with a human bite, not who caused it.
The report you receive
Compliant with the rules of the forum, candid about the method.
The method used
What technique was applied, and why it fits the question.
Its known limitations
What the method cannot establish, stated plainly.
The confidence in the conclusion
The weight that can properly be attached to it.
Why solicitors instruct us
Evidence that will survive scrutiny in the witness box.
We state what the method cannot establish
An expert who does not tell you what their technique cannot establish is a liability under cross-examination.
We decline what the science does not support
For a defence solicitor, a refusal is worth more than a confident opinion that will not survive scrutiny.
A named case manager
One point of contact coordinates the instruction, expert correspondence and delivery of the report.
FAQs
Commonly asked questions
Identification of the deceased from dental records, age estimation, and interpretation of injury to the mouth and face.
No. It is an area of practice. A forensic odontologist is a registered dentist with additional forensic training.
Its scientific foundations have been criticised by the National Academy of Sciences and by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and it is associated with wrongful convictions in the United States. We do not offer bite-mark identification.
Usually the coroner or the police rather than an instructing solicitor.
Discuss an instruction