After 23 Years and Four Trials, Prosecutors Finally Dismiss Charges Against Bill Richards
In a wholly unexpected move, the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office on June 28 dismissed murder charges against Bill Richards, who spent 23 years behind bars for the brutal murder of his wife, Pamela. Richards has vociferously maintained that he is innocent of the August 10, 1993, strangulation and bludgeoning murder of his wife on the couple’s property in California’s High Desert. The Richards case is controversial and has been long considered a wrongful conviction based on the discredited junk science of bite mark analysis.
“I feel great,” Richards told The Intercept, after the dismissal. “It’s like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders – more like off my heart.”
Prosecutors tried three times to convict Richards — two trials ended in a hung jury and a third ended in a mistrial during jury selection — before calling to the witness stand during Richards’ fourth trial in 1997 a renown forensic dentist, Dr. Norman “Skip” Sperber, to testify that a lesion on the top of Pamela’s hand was a bite mark and a clear match to Richards’ allegedly unique lower dentition. Richards was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/28/after-23-years-and-four-trials-prosecutors-finally-dismiss-charges-against-bill-richards/
