Frimpong Case: Teeth Tell the Truth

Read the previous chapter here.

A few weeks before swabbing Randall, Detective Kies had approached Raymond Johansen, a local dentist with additional expertise in forensic odontology – the science and art of matching dental structures to other evidence. Accompanied by Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department Sergeant Greg Weitzman, who knew the dentist, Kies had asked Johansen to compare enhanced photos of Eric’s teeth to photos of the bite mark on Jane Doe’s right cheek. When Johansen told Kies that the evidence was too “vague” to rule Eric in or out as the biter, Kies left and found a credentialed odontologist in San Diego, Norman Sperber, without filing a report on Johansen’s findings. This was a constitutional breach referred to as a Brady violation (case law: Brady v Maryland). The prosecution, which includes the police, is required to inform the defense of all exculpatory evidence.

By sheer accident, defense attorney Sanger discovered the undisclosed contact between Kies and Johansen shortly before Kies took the witness stand at trial, and Sanger sandbagged him on cross-examination. At first, Kies denied meeting Johansen before admitting that, though required, he hadn’t written a report of the contact. This soon led Sanger to move for a mistrial. During the hearing on the motion (which Hill denied), Weitzman, the property sergeant, asserted that the Sheriff’s Department hadn’t employed Johansen because he believed his fees would be too high compared to Sperber, who he claimed had agreed to work for “zero.” Sperber, however, did indeed charge for services – more, possibly, than Johansen would have, given that the county was on the hook for Kies and Weitzman to fly down to San Diego to see him, and for Sperber’s airfare, hotels, and expenses before and after trial. “I do not do this free,” Sperber testified. “I charge like every other forensic dentist does.”