The cadaver king and the country dentist : a true story of injustice in the American South / Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington ; foreword by John Grisham.
2018
RA1025.H38 B35 2018 (Map It)
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Author
Title
The cadaver king and the country dentist : a true story of injustice in the American South / Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington ; foreword by John Grisham.
Published
New York, NY : PublicAffairs, [2018]
Copyright
©2018
Call Number
RA1025.H38 B35 2018
Edition
First edition.
ISBN
9781610396912 (hardcover)
161039691X (hardcover)
161039691X (hardcover)
Description
xxii, 391 pages ; 25 cm
System Control No.
(OCoLC)965806090
Summary
Relates the stories of two innocent men who were wrongly accused and convicted of crimes due largely to the legally condoned failures perpetrated by invalid forensic science and institutional racism. --Publisher.
"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. [This book] 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."--Dust jacket.
"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. [This book] 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."--Dust jacket.
Note
"February 2018"--Title page verso.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-391).
Available in Other Form
Online version: Balko, Radley. Cadaver king and the country dentist. First edition. New York : PublicAffairs, [2017] 9781610396929 (DLC) 2017011704
Record Appears in
Gift
Purchased from the income of the Murray Fund
Gift
The Arthur W. Diamond Law Library
Purchased from the income of the Murray Fund
Table of Contents
Foreword / John Grisham
ix
Authors' Note
xiii
1.
Murder of Courtney Smith
1
2.
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.
West Phenomenon
105
8.
Entrenchment
117
9.
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.
Unraveling
247
14.
Redemption and Insurrection
261
15.
No Reckoning
285
Acknowledgments
321
Notes
323