The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South

by Radley Balko, Tucker Carrington, John Grisham (Foreword by)

Overview

“A haunting true crime tale of systemic incompetence and racism” (New York Times) – 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781610396912
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	02/27/2018
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Radley Balko reports on criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties for The Washington Post. He was previously a writer and investigative reporter at the Huffington Post, and a reporter and editor for Reason magazine. He is also author of Rise of the Warrior Cop. His work has been cited twice by the U.S. Supreme Court, and by the Mississippi Supreme Court and two federal appeals courts. He has won the L.A. Press Club's Journalist of the Year award, the NACDL's Champion of Justice Award, the Innocence Project's Journalism Award, and the Bastiat Prize for Journalism. He lives in Nashville, where he also writes about the city's music and culture.

Tucker Carrington is the director of the George C. Cochran Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi School of Law. He has worked as a criminal defense lawyer for his entire legal career, most of it as a public defender in Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

Foreword John Grisham ix

Authors' Note xiii

1 The Murder of Courtney Smith 1

2 The Murder of Christine Jackson 25

3 Investigating the Dead 35

4 At the Hands of Persons Unknown 51

5 Setting the Stage for the Cadaver King 73

6 Rise of a Fiefdom 91

7 The West Phenomenon 105

8 Entrenchment 117

9 The Trial of Levon Brooks 135

10 Keep that Woman Under Control 161

11 Vessels of Wrath, Fitted for Destruction 185

12 Prayers for Relief 209

13 The Unraveling 247

14 Redemption and Insurrection 261

15 No Reckoning 285

Acknowledgments 321

Notes 323

Editorial Reviews

…Balko and Carrington devote the bulk of the book to pulling back the curtain on the justice system's little-known but systemic problem that put Brewer and Brooks behind bars: faulty and biased forensic evidence. Junk science convicted these men; real science set them free. The inability of judges and jurors to tell the difference is why innocent men languish in jail while the prosecutors who put them there run for higher office…Balko and Carrington have written a cry for help…But, like so many who have demanded criminal justice reform, the authors are likely to fail. Not because they're wrong, or because not enough judges and lawyers and politicians know they're right. But because fixing the problem is just too hard. The real tension in Balko and Carrington's book is why it's too hard…

The New York Times Book Review - Elie Mystal

A haunting true‑crime tale of systemic incompetence and racism...Balko and Carrington have written a cry for help.”—New York Times

“A superb work of investigative reporting...Balko and Carrington combine expertise, industry and outrage into a searing narrative.”—Wall Street Journal

“A horrifying exposé of how a few individuals can infect an entire state's criminal justice system.”—Kirkus (Starred)

“A clear and shocking portrait of the structural failings of the U.S. criminal justice system... This eminently readable book builds a hard‑to‑ignore case for comprehensive criminal justice reform.”—Publishers Weekly (Starred)

“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.”—Booklist

“Of all the tragedy documented in this book, surely the most pernicious is the unacknowledged progression of discriminatory policies in the American criminal justice system. The black men at the story's center were not snatched out of a Mississippi jail and lynched. They were falsely imprisoned. They were haunted by state efforts to execute them for three decades. This is a powerful and instructive story, masterfully told by Balko and Carrington.”—Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award winning author of Stamped from the Beginning

“The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist paints a devastating picture of Mississippi’s ongoing systemic abuse of junk evidence by medical examiners and highlights the myriad ways the current legal and political systems reward certain and speedy convictions. This carefully constructed and highly‑readable account also reveals the ways in which catastrophic and almost comic expert errors can lead to hasty conclusions, ruined lives, and may take years to correct, if they are corrected at all.”—Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor, Slate

“If, like most Americans, you think that our legal system protects innocent people from being falsely convicted, be prepared to have your faith shattered. In horrifying detail, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington show how structural racism, junk science, overzealous prosecutors, compliant judges, and a bloodthirsty press conspired to wreck lives and convict the innocent. Grounded in Mississippi courtrooms, but with national implications, this book will leave you outraged and hungry for change.”—James Forman, Jr, author of Locking Up Our Own

From the Publisher

★ 2017-11-13
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 exposé 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 exposé of how a few individuals can infect an entire state's criminal justice system.

Kirkus Reviews

A horrifying exposé of how a few individuals can infect an entire state’s criminal justice system.”

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A superb work of investigative reporting…Balko and Carrington combine expertise, industry, and outrage into a searing narrative.”

Wall Street Journal

Sometimes the best thing a narrator can do is just get out of the way of the story. Robert Fass does just that with this tale of stunning forensic fakery in the criminal justice system…Fass’ delivery is measured, steady, and varied with slight pauses…and keeps listeners engaged.”

AudioFile

Junk science convicted these men; real science set them free…The inability of judges and jurors to tell the difference is why innocent men languish in jail while the prosecutors who put them there run for higher office.”

New York Times

A blistering exposé of Mississippi’s bungle-prone process of investigating deaths.”

Garden & Gun

Notable for its depth and geographic focus…this [is a] stinging exposé of faulty forensics.”

Library Journal

Of all the tragedy documented in this book, surely the most pernicious is the unacknowledged progression of discriminatory policies in the American criminal justice system. The black men at the story's center were not snatched out of a Mississippi jail and lynched. They were falsely imprisoned. They were haunted by state efforts to execute them for three decades. This is a powerful and instructive story, masterfully told by Balko and Carrington.

National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from IbramX. Kendi

If, like most Americans, you think that our legal system protects innocent people from being falsely convicted, be prepared to have your faith shattered. In horrifying detail, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington show how structural racism, junk science, overzealous prosecutors, compliant judges, and a bloodthirsty press conspired to wreck lives and convict the innocent. Grounded in Mississippi courtrooms, but with national implications, this bookwill leave you outraged and hungry for change.

JamesForman

A clear and shocking portrait…This eminently readable book builds a hard-to-ignore case for comprehensive criminal justice reform.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A haunting true-crime tale of systemic incompetence and racism...Balko and Carrington have written a cry for help.

The New York Times

A horrifying exposé of how a few individuals can infect an entire state's criminal justice system.

*Starred Review* Kirkus Reviews

A clear and shocking portrait of the structural failings of the U.S. criminal justice system... This eminently readable book builds a hard-to-ignore case for comprehensive criminal justice reform.

*Starred Review* Publishers Weekly

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist paints a devastating picture of Mississippi's ongoing systemic abuse of junk evidence by medical examiners and highlights the myriad ways the current legal and political systems reward certain and speedy convictions. This carefully constructed and highly-readable account also reveals the ways in which catastrophic and almost comic expert errors can lead to hasty conclusions, ruined lives, and may take years to correct, if they are corrected at all.

DahliaLithwick

A powerful and instructive story, masterfully told by Balko and Carrington.”

National Book Award-winning author Ibram X. Kendi

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.”

Booklist

This is a true crime story, but it is more than a report of the tragic murders of two young girls. The crime at the center of this book is the one committed by a justice system that is more concerned with conviction rates than unearthing the truth…A chilling reminder of what happens to the rule of law when the law forgets the rules.”

BookPage