A former Ohio police captain who has spent 14 years in prison, largely because of a bite mark found on his ex-wife's blood-soaked body, now has new DNA test results that his attorneys say prove his innocence.

If a judge agrees, Doug Prade could become the latest of more than a dozen prisoners across the country to be set free after comparisons between their teeth and bite marks found on victims turned out to be wrong.

An Akron judge, in a ruling that could come as early as October, could exonerate Prade, order a new trial or find that the DNA test isn't strong enough for either.

"'I told you I was innocent. Now there's proof,'" the 66-year-old Prade said after getting the test results back, according to his attorney, Carrie Wood with the Cincinnati-based Ohio Innocence Project.

Once considered cutting-edge science, bite-mark comparisons have been under fire for more than a decade. Across the country, at least 11 prisoners convicted of rape or murder based largely on bite mark-comparisons were exonerated eight of them with DNA evidence. At least five other men more were proved innocent as they sat in prison awaiting trials.

Some forensic dentists have renounced the practice altogether, while many say it's still a useful tool if applied properly.

In Prade's case, a new test has found that male DNA taken from around a bite mark on a lab coat that his ex-wife was wearing when she was killed is not his.

The test conducted for free by the private DNA Diagnostics Center in Fairfield, Ohio, wasn't widely available at the time of Prade's trial.

Prade said Thursday that he hopes the results are enough to free him, although he'd be happy with a new trial.

"For them to find what I had known all that time was no surprise to me," he told The Associated Press in a phone interview from a central Ohio prison. "I guess it was an epiphany to everyone else 'Hey, this guy was telling the truth.'"

Excerpt from:
Ohio Prisoner Hopes DNA Test Proves Innocence