On June 8, Robert Wallace Lyons, 61, became the first Oregonian to have a murder conviction vacated under a new law discrediting bitemark analysis. Lyons has been in prison for 35 years.
“Mr. Lyons conviction was based on flawed and now-discredited expert testimony related to bitemark evidence, and that testimony infected his entire trial with error of consequential constitutional dimension that could have tended to affect the outcome of the case and undermined the underlying fairness of the trial,” attorneys Janis Puracal and Byron Lichstein with the Forensic Justice Project (FJP) wrote in a petition for post-conviction relief.
Marion County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Hart granted Lyons that petition, which was filed in 2024. FJP is an Oregon-based nonprofit working to prevent and correct wrongful convictions…