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

by Radley Balko, Tucker Carrington Narrated by Robert Fass

Overview

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.

Editorial Reviews

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile

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. The audiobook is a deeply reported story of two men, Steven Hayne and Michael West, who teamed up in Mississippi to practice bad science that led to multiple bad convictions. With limited dialogue, Fass must keep listeners’ attention, and he does, for the most part. Fass’s delivery is measured, steady, and varied with slight pauses. While some listeners might feel his performance could use a bit more oomph occasionally, his overall narration quietly meets the audiobook’s structural challenge and keeps listeners engaged. G.S.D. 2019 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

The New York Times Book Review - Elie Mystal

…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…

Publishers Weekly

★ 12/18/2017
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.)

From the Publisher

"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."—IbramX. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from theBeginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

"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, 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 bookwill leave you outraged and hungry for change."—JamesForman, Jr., Professor, Yale Law School and author of Locking Up OurOwn: Crime and Punishment in Black America

"A haunting true-crime tale of systemic incompetence and racism...Balko and Carrington have written a cry for help."—The 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 Reviews, *Starred Review*

"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 Review*

"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

APRIL 2018 - AudioFile

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. The audiobook is a deeply reported story of two men, Steven Hayne and Michael West, who teamed up in Mississippi to practice bad science that led to multiple bad convictions. With limited dialogue, Fass must keep listeners’ attention, and he does, for the most part. Fass’s delivery is measured, steady, and varied with slight pauses. While some listeners might feel his performance could use a bit more oomph occasionally, his overall narration quietly meets the audiobook’s structural challenge and keeps listeners engaged. G.S.D. 2019 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

★ 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.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173396518
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	02/27/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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