Gilbert Poole Jr. was 23 years old when he was arrested for the 1988 murder of Robert Mejia in Pontiac, Michigan. Witnesses had last seen Mejia speaking with an unfamiliar man at a local bar. Their original descriptions portrayed that man as having a bushy beard, a full mustache, long hair, and biker-style clothing. Six months later, Poole’s former girlfriend contacted police and claimed that he had confessed to killing Mejia during an attempted robbery. The prosecution relied on her account, disputed witness identifications, and bite-mark evidence. The witnesses offered conflicting descriptions of the man seen with Mejia and differing accounts of when and with whom Mejia left the bar. Poole’s former girlfriend also initially gave police the wrong month for the alleged confession. Other evidence weakened the robbery theory because Mejia’s watch remained on his body and his wallet was found inside his locked vehicle. A forensic dentist testified that a bite mark on Mejia’s arm matched Poole’s teeth and claimed the probability of another person producing the same pattern was approximately 2.1 billion to one. The comparison was performed on human skin, which the expert acknowledged could become distorted through movement and changes after death. Bite-mark analysis was later widely discredited as lacking a reliable scientific foundation. Blood evidence presented at trial also failed to establish Poole’s guilt. Blood beneath Mejia’s fingernails excluded Poole, another blood sample did not match either man, and no hairs recovered from Mejia’s vehicle were consistent with Poole. Nevertheless, Poole was convicted of first-degree murder in June 1989 and sentenced to life in prison without parole. After years of unsuccessful appeals, advanced DNA testing was performed on bloodstained rocks and grass collected from the crime scene. The results excluded Poole from every tested sample and revealed DNA from an unidentified person who was neither Poole nor the victim. In May 2021, the Cooley Law School Innocence Project and the Michigan Attorney General’s Conviction Integrity Unit jointly requested that his conviction be vacated and the charge dismissed. Poole was released after spending nearly 32 years wrongfully incarcerated. (National Registry of Exonerations)