Mississippi judge drops case for man who spent 23 years on death row By (0) Eddie Lee Howard Jr. spent 23 years in prison on a wrongful murder conviction. File Photo courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Corrections Jan. 8 (UPI) -- A Mississippi court has dropped the murder charges for a man who spent 23 years on death row for a conviction based on discredited bite-mark evidence. Eddie Lee Howard Jr., 67, had twice been convicted for the 1992 rape and murder of 87-year-old Georgia Kemp in Lowndes County. His 2000 conviction was based on testimony from dentists who said that marks on Kemp's body matched Howard's teeth.