Conviction of man in 1989 Eugene murder is tossed out under new ‘junk science’ law

A 1991 murder conviction in which jurors heard testimony about bite-mark evidence has been tossed out in the death of a 24-year-old woman at a Eugene motel apartment.

Bite-mark analysis is considered a discredited forensic science under a state law that took effect in April.

Robert Wallace Lyons, 61, remains in the Oregon State Penitentiary after the June 16 court order. The Lane County District Attorney’s office must decide whether to pursue a retrial in the death of Lori Stabenow, who was discovered lifeless in her room at the Stage Stop Inn on West Sixth Avenue.

“We are in the process of determining whether this murder trial from 35 years ago is feasible for prosecution at this point,” Lane County District Attorney Christopher Parosa said in an email Monday, June 22. “Because it’s an open and pending case/investigation, we are not at liberty to discuss the case further.”

Lyons was a Pendleton resident who, at the time of the murder, had been staying at the same motel as Stabenow while going to truck driving school in Eugene, according to court documents.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after being found guilty of aggravated murder, murder, first-degree sexual abuse and first-degree burglary.

Lyons is the first person to have a conviction vacated under the new Oregon law, according to the Portland-based Forensic Justice Project.

‘Flawed and now-discredited testimony’

A 2024 petition filed by the Forensic Justice Project argued in court documents Lyons’ conviction was “based on flawed and now-discredited expert testimony.”

Lyons has “absolutely” maintained his innocence, said Janis Puracal, executive director of the Forensic Justice Project.

“He’s looking forward to finally getting a chance to clear his name. He’s been waiting for this for 35 years, and so this is finally his opportunity to do that,” Puracal said.

Stabenow died in 1989. Investigators found evidence she had been fatally strangled and sexually assaulted, according to court documents. Police also found Lyons’ wallet beneath her bed.

Jurors heard about “numerous bite marks from her shoulder down to her leg,” according to a 1993 Oregon Court of Appeals ruling.

The appeals court in 1993 affirmed Lyons’ conviction. His appeal at that time did not challenge the bite-mark evidence.

A witness called as an expert, Dr. Lowell Levine, told jurors he had no doubt some of the marks on Stabenow matched wax molds made from Lyons’ teeth, according to the 1993 appeals court ruling.

But the type of bite mark comparison done by Levine in the 1990 trial is now widely considered as being without a scientific basis.

“I think it started with proven DNA exonerations,” Byron Lichstein, an attorney with the Forensic Justice Project said. Bite-mark evidence popped up in multiple wrongful conviction cases, he said. 

“So, you’re seeing this pattern of cases that were based on bite-mark identification showing up as proven DNA exonerations, and that then led to a broader effort among scientific authorities to study, why is this happening?” Lichstein said.

Other forensic evidence also came under question, leading to a 2009 National Academy of Sciences report aimed at strengthening forensic science. 

The 2009 report noted problems with bite-mark analysis, including how “different experts provide widely differing results,” with “no science on the reproducibility” of methods used to find the probability of a match.

A March 2023 report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found “a lack of support” for the ideas that people have unique bite marks or that a unique bite “can be accurately transferred to human skin.”

Scientific authorities “were really just appalled at what was actually being done in the technique, and how unscientific and error-prone it was,” Lichstein said.

Most criminal prosecutions take place under state laws, and states over the years have taken various steps in response to questions about shifts in forensic science or bite-mark evidence specifically. 

For example, Texas in 2013 passed a law allowing prisoners to challenge their convictions when new science contradicts the forensic analysis used in their trials, and a few other states now have similar changed-science laws. A Texas commission in 2016 recommended that courts pause use of expert bite-mark expert testimony.

Oregon law

Oregon lawmakers this year passed Senate Bill 1515, which, in addition to bite-mark analysis, lists hair microscopy and comparative bullet lead analysis as “discredited forensic science disciplines.”

For those who had such forensic evidence used against them, the law clears away legal hurdles related to the time passed since the conviction. The law applies to those convicted if there was a  “reasonable probability” of a different outcome at trial without such evidence, or if such evidence was a “material factor” in a guilty or no-contest plea.

“It allows us to get those folks back into court, so that they can have a chance to actually prove their innocence or get that conviction vacated,” Puracal said.

The nonprofit organization takes on cases around the state “where we believe that there is some kind of junk science that is either going to be used to get to a conviction, or was used to get a conviction,” Puracal said.

Puracal said that they first took on the Lyons case “because it rests almost entirely on the bite mark evidence.”

“The challenge under Oregon law is that we just didn’t have a path to get back into court on these kinds of cases,” Puracal said, calling Lyons’ case an “uphill battle” before the new law.

Puracal called the new law “the first time that the state has opened the door to be able to go back and look at these old cases.”

Court records show how attorneys with the Oregon Department of Justice initially disputed claims made in the 2024 petition that Lyons was wrongfully convicted.

But in June, a new court filing cited the passage of the new law, as state attorneys agreed that, based on the petition and also evidence exchanged: “Petitioner’s convictions in the underlying criminal case (Lane County Case No. 108908273) must be vacated, and he must be granted a new trial pursuant to Senate Bill 1515.”

Asked if she had any information about who might have murdered Stabenow, Puracal said “that’s all stuff for retrial, so it’s not something we’d be able to share at this point.”

Puracal said it’s unclear how many more such cases with questionable bite-mark evidence exist.

“We know that there have been at least 33 exonerations in bite-mark cases across the country, but none so far in Oregon,” Puracal said. ”So, we just don’t know how many cases actually were based on bite-mark comparison evidence until we go look, and Senate Bill 1515 is our first opportunity to go and look.”