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Summary
Summary
A shocking and deeply reported account of the persistent plague of institutional racism and junk forensic science in our criminal justice system, and its devastating effect on innocent lives
After two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement pursued and convicted two innocent men: Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. Together they spent a combined thirty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008. Meanwhile, the real killer remained free.
The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist recounts the story of how the criminal justice system allowed this to happen, and of how two men, Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West, built successful careers on the back of that structure. For nearly two decades, Hayne, a medical examiner, performed the vast majority of Mississippi's autopsies, while his friend Dr. West, a local dentist, pitched himself as a forensic jack-of-all-trades. Together they became the go-to experts for prosecutors and helped put countless Mississippians in prison. But then some of those convictions began to fall apart.
Here, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington tell the haunting story of how the courts and Mississippi's death investigation system -- a relic of the Jim Crow era -- failed to deliver justice for its citizens. The authors argue that bad forensics, structural racism, and institutional failures are at fault, raising sobering questions about our ability and willingness to address these crucial issues.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Investigative reporter Balko and former criminal defense lawyer Carrington offer a clear and shocking portrait of the structural failings of the U.S. criminal justice system in this account of two medical professionals-Steven Hayne, Mississippi's "former de facto medical examiner," and his friend Michael West, a forensic dentist-who, in turn, built successful careers off of a broken system. The book focuses on the doctors' roles in the trials of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, who were both wrongly convicted of crimes involving the sexual assault and murder of minors in the 1990s (both men were exonerated in 2007). The authors methodically dissect the doctors' testimonies in the trials of the two men and point to major flaws; such as when, during Brooks's trial, Hayne asserted that marks on the corpse were definitely human bite marks, despite the condition of the body, which had been submerged in water and was badly decomposed. The authors make clear that these two false convictions resulted from the willingness of Mississippi authorities to overlook legitimate questions about the quality of Hayne's and West's work; for example, Hayne, who performed 80% of the state's autopsies for more than two decades, once wrote that he had removed the uterus and ovaries from a male cadaver. This eminently readable book builds a hard-to-ignore case for comprehensive criminal justice reform. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A journalist and criminal defense lawyer combine their knowledge about wrongful convictions in Mississippi to expose a corrupt system, with a keen focus on a lying medical examiner and a dentist who concocted phony evidence based on bite marks on the bodies of crime victims.The medical examiner is Steven Hayne; the dentist is Michael West. In the small world of detectives, lawyers, judges, and journalists trying to reduce the number of innocent citizens in prison, the perplexing rise to influence of co-conspirators Hayne and West is well-known, as is their eventual disgrace. But the saga has never been explored in such depth. Carrington devotes his life to freeing innocent inmates, serving as director of the Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi School of Law. Balko's (Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, 2013) focus as a Washington Post opinion journalist and investigative reporter is more broad, but he has experience chronicling innocence cases. Although the authors have reported on many wrongful convictions, the book focuses heavily on two murder cases, both involving innocent men: Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, both of whom were exonerated after years in prison. Their expos of systemic injustice across Mississippi goes beyond Hayne and West to name prosecutors, judges, legislators, and others who catered to them. Why cater to two such craven incompetents? Because those inside the criminal justice system were more interested in closing cases (usually with black defendants) than in identifying the actual perpetrators. Detectives, prosecutors, and judges intent on getting cases off the docket knew they could rely on Hayne and West to testify dishonestly under oath. The authors explain the motivations of Hayne and West: zealotry on the side of law enforcement, money for accepting a huge volume of cases to lie about in court under oath, and perhaps racism. A horrifying expos of how a few individuals can infect an entire state's criminal justice system. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
It is relatively easy to convict an innocent person, writes John Grisham in his foreword to this searing investigation into a system that results in too many wrongful convictions. Balko, an opinion blogger for the Washington Post, and Carrington, a criminal defense lawyer and director of the George C. Cochran Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi School of Law, have spent years examining the flaws in the Mississippi justice system, a system that has casually meted out sentences based on faulty evidence and a rush to justice. Behind much of the injustice were two almost grotesquely southern gothic figures: an inept medical examiner who rushed through autopsies and a small-town dentist called in to testify in numerous criminal trials, using junk science like the now-discredited bite-mark analysis. The book focuses on two men wrongfully convicted of the murders of two three-year-old girls in 1990 and 1992. Through the intensive scrutiny of how the men were speedily tried, convicted, and then released after years in prison, the authors uncover an unholy alliance of racist cops and prosecutors with questionable death investigations and misapplied forensics. This work should spark both admiration and outrage and, one hopes, reform.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE HOUSE OF BROKEN ANGELS, by Luis Alberto Urrea. ??? (Little, Brown, $27.) In Urrea's sprawling, tender, funny , BKOKÉIT anc· bighearted family saga - a Mexican-American A N CE LS nove' t'lat's a'so an American novel - the de La Cruz ,G7?;??? clan gathers in San Diego to celebrate the 70th birth- day of its patriarch, who is dying of cancer. THE CADAVER KING AND THE COUNTRY DENTIST: A True Story of Injustice in the American South, by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington. (PublicAffairs, $28.) Tracing the wrongful convictions of two men in Mississippi in the early 1990s, the authors ask whether problems in our justice system stem from basic incompetence or bald racism. FAREWELL TO THE HORSE: A Cultural History, by Ulrich Raulff. (Liveright, $35.) Raulff ranges far and wide to tell the story of the complicated relationship between humans and horses - an elegy that is labyrinthine in the varied places it goes, but never frustrating. VICTORIOUS CENTURY: The United Kingdom, 1800-1906, by David Cannadine. (Viking, $40.) Any serious scholar of the Victorian Age faces a tricky balance sheet of profit and loss. Cannadine's admirable history lucidly records Britain's many triumphs at home and abroad, and its many failures as well. SONG OF A CAPTIVE BIRD, by Jasmin Darznik. (Ballantine, $27.) Darznik's novel, inspired by the turbulent life of the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied her country's conservative mores by daring to write verse about female pleasure, is superbly dramatized, each scene designed to stir up fury and longing. FATAL DISCORD: Erasmus, Luther and the Fight for the Western Mind, by Michael Massing. (Harper, $45.) Last year saw a profusion of books about Martin Luther to mark the 500 th anniversary of his posting the 95 Theses. Massing widens the lens wondrously, bringing in Erasmus, the great humanist foe of Luther. Their rivalry set the course for much of Western civilization. THE LAND BETWEEN TWO RIVERS: Writing in an Age of Refugees, by Tom Sleigh. (Graywolf, paper, $16.) Sleigh visits some of the world's hot zones - Kurdistan, Mogadishu, rural Lebanon - to bear witness. "Even people threatened by drought and starvation," he writes, "have to get on with their lives." JOURNEY INTO EUROPE: Islam, Immigration, and Identity, by Akbar Ahmed. (Brookings, $34.99.) Ahmed, a Pakistani scholar and diplomat, interviewed Muslims across Europe about their situation. "This, I felt, was Europe's ticking time bomb," he says. THE MAD WOLF'S DAUGHTER, by Diane Magras. (Kathy Dawson/ Penguin, $16.99; ages 8 to 12.) This fast-paced novel follows a 12-year-old girl in medieval Scotland who must find the truth about her family's past to save her father and brothers. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Library Journal Review
This book explores the truly dark side of criminal investigations. Washington Post journalist Balko (Rise of the Warrior Cop) and lawyer Carrington (law & director, George C. Cochran Innocence Project, Univ. of Mississippi Sch. of Law) provide a case study of the team of Dr. Steven Hayne, acting medical examiner, and Dr. Michael West, a dentist who specialized in "bite mark" analysis. Both worked in Mississippi and other parts of the South over a 20-year period. This story emerges from their roles as "experts" in two Mississippi murder cases in the 1990s. Both defendants were convicted of heinous murders, and both were ultimately exonerated. Details of these tragedies are conveyed in the context of issues such as collusion among various actors in the criminal justice system, junk science in the courtroom, and racial aspects of Southern justice. The chilling, fact-filled narrative also raises important questions about "privatization" of public offices and suggests needed reforms. Well-documented and accessible, with a definite point of view, this book complements other recent compilations of Innocence Project cases but is notable for its depth and geographic focus. VERDICT This stinging exposé of faulty forensics is suited to the serious CSI enthusiast as well as students of criminal justice.-Antoinette Brinkman, formerly with -Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., Evansville © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Foreword | p. ix |
| Authors' Note | p. xiii |
| 1 The Murder of Courtney Smith | p. 1 |
| 2 The Murder of Christine Jackson | p. 25 |
| 3 Investigating the Dead | p. 35 |
| 4 At the Hands of Persons Unknown | p. 51 |
| 5 Setting the Stage for the Cadaver King | p. 73 |
| 6 Rise of a Fiefdom | p. 91 |
| 7 The West Phenomenon | p. 105 |
| 8 Entrenchment | p. 117 |
| 9 The Trial of Levon Brooks | p. 135 |
| 10 Keep that Woman Under Control | p. 161 |
| 11 Vessels of Wrath, Fitted for Destruction | p. 185 |
| 12 Prayers for Relief | p. 209 |
| 13 The Unraveling | p. 247 |
| 14 Redemption and Insurrection | p. 261 |
| 15 No Reckoning | p. 285 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 321 |
| Notes | p. 323 |