It is relatively easy to convict an innocent person. Millions of
defendants are processed through our courts each year, so it
becomes nearly impossible to determine how many are
actually innocent once they've been convicted. No one has
the time or resources to examine the facts and backgrounds
of those claiming to be wrongfully convicted. Actual wrongful
conviction estimates range from 2 percent to 10 percent, but
no one really knows. These numbers may sound low, but
when applied to a prison population of 2.3 million, they
become staggering. Can there really be between 46,000 and
230,000 innocent people locked away? Those of us who are
involved in innocence work firmly believe so.
And, practically speaking, once an innocent person is
convicted, it is virtually impossible to get them out of prison.
I serve on the board of directors of the Innocence Project in
New York. In the past twenty-five years, we have secured
through DNA testing the release of 349 innocent men and
women, 20 of whom had been sent to death row. All told, over
New York. In the past twenty-five years, we have secured
through DNA testing the release of 349 innocent men and
women, 20 of whom had been sent to death row. All told, over
2,000 exonerations, including 200 from death row and
including those not involving DNA, have occurred in the
United States during that same period. While we are proud of
our work, we've only scratched the surface.
Wrongful convictions happen for eight reasons. Not all
are neatly defined, and they usually combine with others to
produce a bad result. In some of the more egregious cases, the
poor defendant unwittingly "hit for the cycle" and got nailed
with all eight.
In no particular order of importance, they are:
Bad Police Work. Most cops are honest, hard-working
professionals who aren't paid a high salary. However, there
are a not insignificant number of cases in which police
officers have hidden, altered, or fabricated evidence, lied on
the witness stand, cut deals with snitches in return for bogus
testimony, intimidated and threatened witnesses, coerced
confessions, or manipulated eyewitness identifications.
Prosecutorial Misconduct. Most prosecutors are honest,
hard-working professionals who aren't paid a high salary at
least not compared to many other lawyers. However, there
have been cases in which prosecutors hid exculpatory
evidence, encouraged witnesses to commit perjury, lied to
jurors, judges, and defense lawyers, used the testimony of
bogus experts, or ignored relevant evidence beneficial to the
accused
False Confessions. Most jurors find it impossible to believe
that a suspect would confess to a serious crime he didn't
commit. Yet the average citizen, if taken to a basement room
and subjected to ten consecutive hours of abusive
that a suspect would confess to a serious crime he didn't
commit. Yet the average citizen, if taken to a basement room
and subjected to ten consecutive hours of abusive
interrogation tactics by experienced cops, might be surprised
at what they would say under extreme duress. Of the 330
people exonerated by DNA from 1989 to 2015, about 25
percent gave bogus confessions after lengthy interrogations.
Virtually every one recanted soon after.
Faulty Eyewitness Identification. More often than not, those
who witness violent acts have trouble accurately recalling the
facts and identifying those involved. Yet police regularly use
physical and photo lineups, and these are often manipulated
in various ways to focus suspicion on favored suspects.
Jailhouse Snitches. This tactic involves one of the oldest and
dirtiest tricks used by police and prosecutors. In every jail
there is a career criminal staring at a long sentence. For
leniency, he can be persuaded to lie to the jury and describe
in great detail the confession Overheard from the accused,
usually a cell mate. And if he performs well enough on the
stand the authorities mi t allow him to walk free.
Bad Lawyering. Those accused of serious crimes rarely
have money. Most are represented by good public defenders,
but too many get stuck with court-appointed lawyers with
little or no experience. Capital cases are complex, the stakes
are enormous, and all too often the defense lawyers are in
over their heads.
Sleeping Judges. Judges are supposed to be impartial
referees intent on ensuring fair trials. They should exclude
confessions that are inconsistent with the physical evidence
and obtained by questionable means, exclude the testimony
of career felons with dubious motives, require prosecutors to
produce exculpatory evidence, and question the credentials
and testimony of all experts outside the presence of the jury.
Unfortunately, judges do not always do what they should. The
reasons are many and varied, but the fact that many
judgeships are elected positions doesn't help. They are
conscious of their upcoming reelection and how the decisions
they make might affect it. And of those judges who are
appointed and not elected, the majority are former
prosecutors.
Junk Science. This is a major reason for wrongful
convictions. Over the past five decades, our courtrooms have Junk Science. This is a major reason for wrongful
convictions. Over the past five decades, our courtrooms have
been flooded with an avalanche of unreliable, even atrocious
"science." Experts of all varieties and with qualifications that
were dubious at best and fraudulent at worst have peddled
(for a fee, of course) all manner of damning theories of guilt
based on their alleged scientific analysis of hair, fibers, bite
marks, arson, boot prints, blood spatters, and ballistics. Of the
330 people exonerated by DNA tests from 1989 to 2015, 71
percent were convicted based on forensic testimony, much of
which was flawed, unreliable, exaggerated, and sometimes
even outright fabricated.
University of Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett has
studied virtually all of the trial transcripts of wrongful
convictions that were later exposed by DN A-based
exonerations. He writes: "There is a national epidemic of
overstated forensic testimon
with a stead
stream of overstated forensic testimony, with a steady stream of
criminal convictions being overturned as the shoddiness of
decades' worth of physical evidence comes to light. The true
scope of the problem is only now coming into focus."
This book tells the story of two of the most ambitious and
daring experts ever allowed in a courtroom. One was a
controversial forensic pathologist who once boasted of
performing over two thousand autopsies in a single year. The
other, his sidekick, was a small-town dentist who brazenly
and without formal training or study assumed the role of an
expert in many other fields, such as ballistics, gunshot
reconstruction, "tool mark" patterns, and the analysis not
only of teeth and bite marks but wound patterns, bruises, and
fingernail scratches. Together, they tag-teamed their way
through rape and murder trials throughout Mississippi and
Louisiana, accumulating an impressive string of convictions,
several of which have now been overturned. Some are still
being litigated. Many others, sadly, seem destined to stand.
This is a maddening story of a broken system, one in
which prosecutors allowed—even encouraged—flawed
forensic testimony because it was skillfully molded to fit their
theories of guilt. Time and again, over two decades, elected which prosecutors allowed—even encouraged—flawed
forensic testimony because it was skillfully molded to fit their
theories or guilt. Time and again, over two decades, elected
judges permitted these two men to take the stand and
convince unsophisticated jurors that science was on the side
of the state. As professional testifiers, they honed their
performances and became thoroughly convincing.
While breathtaking in its scope, the work these two men
did within the justice system is also heartbreaking in its
devastation. No one really knows the true extent of the
damage. No one knows how many innocent women and men
have been convicted in trials in which these two testified, nor
is the truth likely ever to be discovered. And it seems nearly
impossible to think the state of Mississippi will investigate,
audit, or take responsibility.
As you turn the pages, you will often be tempted to close
this book and either laugh or cry or yell that what happened in Mississippi cannot possibly be true. But it is. It happened in
plain view and with the complicity of many who were sworn
to uphold the law. It is my hope that this book might inspire
those with the necessary will and persistence to finally bring
justice for the men and women around the country who have
been wrongfully convicted and to fix the system so that
nothing like this can ever happen again.
John Grisham
PS: In the spirit of full disclosure, I am compelled to accept
my share of the responsibility. As an elected member of the
Mississippi legislature back in the 1980s, I remember the
struggle to establish and fund the Office of the State Medical
Examiner. It was a thorny issue that wouldn't go away, but it
was far from the most pressing matters we faced each year. I
have no idea how I voted on the various bills, but I do
remember being embarrassed by our antiquated system of
elected coroners. I recall being frustrated by the state's
inability to find and keep a medical examiner. Its failure to do
so was a major reason some of the characters in this story
I first traveled to Mississippi in 2005 to report on the case of
Cory Maye, a tragic story about overzealous policing and the
drug war—a subject that would later become the focus of my
first book. While investigating that case, I stumbled onto this
much bigger story, one that covers two decades and
thousands of trials, several of them death penalty cases.
Cory Maye had been convicted the previous year for
killing Ron Jones, a Prentiss, Mississippi, police officer, during
a drug raid. Maye, who was home with his young daughter
when the twelve-thirty-a.m. raid went down, claimed he
mistook the cops who broke down his door for criminal
intruders.
The raid on Maye certainly seemed to have been a
mistake. Maye lived with his girlfriend and daughter on one
side of a duplex. On the other side lived a man named Jamie
The police tound a signiticant quantity ot
drugs in Smith's
home.
Cory Maye had no prior criminal record, didn't know his
neighbor, and had no significant quantity of drugs in his
home (the police found a single burnt marijuana cigarette in
the apartment—which would othenvisc have merited a $50
fine). But Maye had just killed a cop. He was black; the cop
was white. And this wasn't just any cop: Ron Jones was also
the son of the town's police chief.
Maye was arrested and charged with capital murder.
Medical examiner Steven Hayne performed the autopsy
on Jones and later testified at Maye's trial. Hayne's testimony
was problematic. Based on Hayne's testimony about the
trajectory the bullet took through Jones's body, the
prosecutor argued to the jury that Maye must have been
standing when he shot Jones, not lying on the floor in fear, as
he had said he was. The claim made it appear as though Maye
had been lying in wait to ambush Jones. In truth, a number of
variables can affect a bullet's trajectory through a body, most
notably the victim's position when shot. Moreover, bullets
found in the door frame of Maye's home had a clear upward
trajectory. A bullet's path through a stationary object like a
door frame was a much more likely indication of Maye's
osition than its ath throu a movin human bein .
Given that Maye's guilt or innocence hinged on whether
the jury believed him when he said he didn't know Jones was
a police officer, the doubt prosecutors cast on Maye's story by
way of Hayne's testimony was critical.
Hayne wasn't outright wrong in Maye's case; he was just
slippery. He never came right out and said that Maye could
only have been standing. Instead, he carefully worded his
answers, allowing the prosecutor to weave the testimony into
the state's closing argument for the jury, all while still
retaining plausible deniability.
Maye was convicted and sentenced to death. He was later
given a new trial when the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled
that he should have been permitted to argue that he was
defending his daughter's life on the night of the raid. In 2011,
after ten years behind bars, he accepted a plea bargain in
Given the way prosecutors were able to use Hayne's
testimony to mislead jurors during Maye's trial, I began to
wonder if they had also done so in others. So I asked around. I
first spoke with Maye's attorney and public defender, Bob
Evans, who recalled the case of Tonya Ward, a woman whose
skeletonized remains had been found in a wooded area and
had been picked at by animals. Hayne testified she had died
from strangulation, an improbable diagnosis when there's no
soft tissue on the body to examine and no way to tell if any
trauma done to her body had come before or after her death.
Other attorneys across Mississippi had similar stories. I
called other medical examiners across the South. And then
police officials and other forensic analysts. On a couple of
occasions, I had barely finished explaining that I was working
on a story about a questionable medical examiner before the
source would interrupt and ask if I was referring to Hayne.
Many wouldn't talk on the record, citing Hayne's reputation
for litigiousness.
But some did. Ken Winter, former head of the Mississippi
Association of Chiefs of police, told mc that he was most
troubled by the sheer quantity of autopsies Hayne performed,
which he called "way too many to do... in the manner they
should be done." One former state official in Mississippi
Other attorneys across Mississippi had similar stories. I
called other medical examiners across the South. And then
police officials and other forensic analysts. On a couple of
occasions, I had barely finished explaining that I was working
on a story about a questionable medical examiner before the
source would interrupt and ask if I was referring to Hayne.
Many wouldn't talk on the record, citing Hayne's reputation
for litigiousness.
But some did. Ken Winter, former head of the Mississippi
Association of Chiefs of police, told mc that he was most
troubled by the sheer quantity of autopsies Hayne performed,
which he called "way too many to do... in the manner they
should be done." One former state official in Mississippi
recalled being pressured by district attorneys to change his
opinion based on Hayne's analysis. And he could think of two
specific murder cases in which Hayne's opinion was "way
outside the purview of a forensic pathologist." The official
was also aghast at Hayne's sloppy practices. 'There were
frequently test tubes sent to the lab with the wrong name on
them," he said. "I reached a point where we just collected all
the trace evidence at the scene."
Former Columbus,
Mississippi, police chief J. D. Sanders also had stories. Sanders
wrote a weekly column in the local newspaper. After a series
of columns in which he criticized Hayne and the death
investigation system, he received a flood of feedback—both
public and private—from coroners and prosecutors across the
state. The anger, virulence, and even death threats in some of
the responses convinced Sanders that things were worse than
he imagined. "There's no question in my mind that there are
innocent people doing time at parchman Penitentiary due to
the testimony of Dr. Hayne," Sanders told me. "There may
even be some on death row."
In October 2007, I published an investigation of Hayne in
Reason magazine, along with an accompanying essay in the
Wall Street Journal. After the story ran, a local TV station
confronted Hayne outside his office about the articles. He
promised to sue both me and the Wail Street Journal. The
couldn't remember.
In the ten years since, I've written dozens of stories about
Hayne. I also began writing about Hayne's sidekick, Michael
West, the dentist, bite mark analyst, and—in my view—a
person who should not have been allowed in a courtroom.
The two men dominated the Mississippi death investigation
system for twenty years. West testified in dozens of cases,
Hayne in thousands. Until and unless the state engages in a
thorough, top-down investigation of their work, we may
never know the extent of the damage they may have done. So
far, the people with the power to initiate such an
investigation haven't shown much interest.
TUCKER CARRINGTON
TUCKER CARRINGTON
In 2007, I was hired to found and direct the Mississippi
Innocence Project, based at the University of Mississippi Law
School in Oxford. I packed up my family and office in
Washington, DC, and moved to north Mississippi. On my first
day at work, I read through some opinions handed down the
week before by the Mississippi Supreme Court. was startled
by the first case I saw. Not only had the state's expert witness
given what I considered to be unfounded forensic testimony,
the trial court had admitted it in a way that seemed fairly
routine. The expert? Steven Hayne. The defendant was
convicted, and the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed.
One of my first tasks as director of a new entity at the law
school was to let people know we existed, and to announce
our upcoming inaugural fundraiser. The event featured John
Grisham—who with his family had provided some of the
funding for the new venture—and fellow novelist Scott
Turow. We sent a mailer to lawyers, politicians, law
enforcement officials, and other prominent figures across the
state. After a few days the responses started pouring in, and it
was clear that my staff and I had our work cut out for us.
was clear that my staff and I had our work cut out for us.
Laurence Mellon, the district attorney for scvcral counties in
the northwest corner of the Delta, wrotc back for proof of my
claim—which by then was common knowledge for anyone
working in the criminal justice system—that DNA evidence
had exonerated more than two hundred people. Somehow
that fact, combined with the establishment of the project,
meant that many prosecutors across the state, who were
graduates of the University of Mississippi School of Law, were
"naturally concerned that the law school is impugning our
integrity." District Attorney Jim Powell wrote a letter, too. He
noted that over the course of America's 230-year history, and
among its population of three hundred million, "there is a
claim of only 200 wrongful convictions." "Where is the
problem?" Powell wondered. He also suggested that instead
of an innocence ro'ect, the law school should start a "the
among its population of three hundred million, "there is a
claim of only 200 wrongful convictions." "Where is the
problem?" Powell wondered. He also suggested that instead
or an innocence project, the law school should start a "the
guilty bastard got off scott free project."
To the extent that these two prosecutors' views were
indicative of others', Mississippi's top law enforcement
officials seemed unwilling to consider the possibility that
Mississippi's justice system might occasionally convict an
innocent man. Within a year they'd be proven wrong, though
hardly chastened.
Over the next decade or so, as we continued our respective
work in journalism and law, Hayne's and West's names and
deeds kept showing up. Occasionally our work on these cases
would overlap, and we'd find ourselves in conversation about
new revelations, old cases, and the state's perpetual
obstinacy. It finally occurred to us that only a book could give
this story the full airing it deserved.
ne',v revelations, cases, Slate'S
obstinacy, II finally occurred 10 uS only a book could gi
and, in response, increasingly strident law-and-or cr rhetoric
from politicians, pop culture, and the media. In the fifteen
years that preceded Kennedy Brewer's arrest, violent crime in
the United States increased by 80 percent. John Dilulio, the
director of George H. W. Bush's White House Faith-Based
Initiatives, warned that society risked becoming infested with
"super-predators": young, amoral killers emerging from "the
youngest, biggest and baddest generation any society has
ever known." In response, lawmakers lengthened prison
sentences with mandatory minimums and swelled the ranks
of police officers on the streets. In some urban areas
governors called out the National Guard. politicians rushed to
outdo one another with ever-more-draconian crime policy.
Most importantly for this story, the doctrine ofhabeas corpus
the mechanism by which prisoners can seek relief from
unlawful detention that dates back to the Magna Carta—was
Mississippi did not distinguish itself. Or it did, but not
well. Governor Kirk Fordice pledged at the time to make the
state "the capital of capital punishment." The state's largest
newspaper ran regular editorials lamenting the fact that
drawn-out appeals were preventing officials from executing
more people more quickly. Politicians, columnists, and tough-
on-crime activists pushed to expand the death penalty to
include rape, child abuse, and drug dealing.
This was the climate in which Kennedy Brewer and Levon
Brooks were convicted. But the full context for this story goes
back much earlier than the 1990s. Since Reconstruction,
Mississippi has executed 809 people, not including
extrajudicial lynchings. Of those executed under law, 642
were black. Most were hanged, though the state now kills
with lethal injection, as does most of the rest of the country.
Noxubee County—where Brewer and Brooks lived, were
arrested, and were tried—housed its gallows in the now
defunct county jail. It has since been converted into the
county library. The gallows trap door is still there, as is the
garrote hook—right next to the genealogy section.
Before getting to the Brooks and Brewer cases, though,
we'll delve into the historical context that made their stories
ossiblc. For decades, whitc Southerners fou t intc ration we'll delve into the historical context that made their stories
possible. For decades, whitc Southerners fought integration
and tried to prescrvc white supremacy with racial violence,
most notoriously through lynching. Mississippi's death
investigation system evolved into a powerful tool to help
cover up those atrocities. By most counts, the state led the
country in lynchings. Over and over again, elected coroners
deliberately covered up racial violence by convening a
coroner*s jury of like-minded men who would inevitably
conclude that obvious murders had been, in fact, accidental
killings, suicides, or natural deaths. When a coroner's jury did
occasionally determine that a lynching had been a homicide,
little to no effort was made to ascertain the identity of the
killers or to bring them to justice.
When lynching became less common, the system that
aided and abetted it still remained. Though some states
moved on from the coroner system, others, including
When lynching became less common, the system that
aided and abetted it still remained. Though some states
moved on from the coroner system, others, including
Mississippi, allowed it to persist. As a new era of public
officials assumed power, they used the system for their own
ends—to rack up convictions, to manipulate the court system,
or simply to make a lot of money. By the mid-1990s, it even
became politically advantageous for some state officials to
reinvestigate cold civil rights murders and try to bring racist
perpetrators of decades-old crimes to justice. Here, too, the
death investigation system proved useful. Steven Hayne
testified in a few such cases. The point here IS not that every
official in Mississippi's criminal justice and its death
investigation systems was or is motivated by bigotry. Hayne,
for example, not only assisted prosecutors in those old civil
rights cases but was also married for a short time to a black
detective. Nevertheless, the system in which he, Michael
West, and the state's coroners operated was built on racism,
and the new victims still tended to bc disproportionately
poor and black, with the effects, though better concealed, just
as pernicious.
This badly flawed Mississippi death investigation system
was then infused with another roblem that has more
was then in ed with another problem that has more
recently received national attention: dubious forensics. Since
the late 1980s, DNA analysis has exonerated hundreds of
innocent prisoners. It has also revealed the extent to which
unsound forensic science—and improper claims about
legitimate forensic disciplines—played a major role in those
cases. But exonerations resulting from DNA testing provide
only a limited glimpse of the problem. Just 5 to 10 percent of
criminal cases involve biological evidence that can be
subjected to DNA testing. In the other 90 to 95 percent of
cases, DNA doesn't exist, has degraded, or has been lost. But
the same unscientific forensic disciplines used in the cases
overturned by DNA testing have undoubtedly also tainted
nan-DNA cases, and probably at about the same rate.
We like to think that our system of justice is unmatched
in its guarantees of fairness. Our democracy is too strong, our
courts too fair, our prosecutors and judges too conscientious
to allow innocents to rot away in prison or be executed. Judge
Learned Hand wrote as much in 1923: "Our dangers do not lie
in too little tenderness to the accused. Our procedure has
always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man
convicted. It is an unreal dream." That sort of resolute
confidence in American justice persisted through the 1990s.
For many, it still persists today. To date, the US Supreme
Court has denied thirty petitions for certiorari filed by
prisoners later shown to be factually innocent. Many of them
were victims of faulty forensic science. The record of lower
courts around the nation is worse.
The primary antagonists in this story are Steven Hayne,
the state's former de facto medical examiner, and Michael
West, a prolific forensic dentist. A third is the state of
Mississippi itself—not its people, but its institutions. In a
larger sense, blame also rests on the courts—both statc and
federal—the media, and the professional organizations that
not only failed to prevent this catastrophe but did very little
even after it was clear that something was terribly wrong.
Hayne in particular has maintained that he was merely a
bit player in all of this—a hardworking doctor who did what
he was asked and had no control over the design of a system
role he played in preserving the system at various points in
this story, but there is at least some truth to it. Certainly no
one would accuse Hayne of aziness. He testified all over the
state and typically worked seven days a week, often until the
wee hours of the morning. It's also true that if Hayne and
West hadn't been the central figures in this story, the system
and its misplaced incentives would have produced other
figures just like them. Indeed, before Hayne's tenure, it
already had.
Most of Hayne's autopsy reports were uncontroversial—as
was most of his court testimony. And a large majority of
people his testimony helped put away were undoubtedly
guilty. Moreover, anyone who did the number of autopsies
Hayne did was bound to make some mistakes. A defender of
Hayne might argue that it's unfair to focus on his mistakes
But that argument is both a defense of Hayne and an
indictment of him. As you continue reading, it's important to
remember that this story didn't happen by accident—it
happened by design. No one forced him to take on the
number of autopsies he did. The death investigation system
in Mississippi is designed to allow coroners, prosecutors, and
law enforcement officials to use their favored medical
examiners. Hayne didn't have to be the doctor whom
Mississippi DAs and coroners favored for nearly two decades.
He emerged as their favorite because of his work product.
And for that, he is certainly open to scrutiny.
Michael West is a different story. As a longtime associate
of Hayne, he was aided and abetted by trial courts throughout
the state that seemed more interested in ensuring the
admission of his novel—and often crucial—forensic testimony
in criminal prosecutions than they did in rigorously assessing
the bases of his claims. For his part, West took advantage of
the opportunity, and then some.
Lawyers for Brooks and Brewer have argued that Hayne
and West's acts over this period of time were intentional.
Recently, a federal appeals court opinion found that while
they were mistaken, there was no evidence of an intent to
fabricate evidence. It's not our intent—and frankly it would
defendants are processed through our courts each year, so it
becomes nearly impossible to determine how many are
actually innocent once they've been convicted. No one has
the time or resources to examine the facts and backgrounds
of those claiming to be wrongfully convicted. Actual wrongful
conviction estimates range from 2 percent to 10 percent, but
no one really knows. These numbers may sound low, but
when applied to a prison population of 2.3 million, they
become staggering. Can there really be between 46,000 and
230,000 innocent people locked away? Those of us who are
involved in innocence work firmly believe so.
And, practically speaking, once an innocent person is
convicted, it is virtually impossible to get them out of prison.
I serve on the board of directors of the Innocence Project in
New York. In the past twenty-five years, we have secured
through DNA testing the release of 349 innocent men and
women, 20 of whom had been sent to death row. All told, over
New York. In the past twenty-five years, we have secured
through DNA testing the release of 349 innocent men and
women, 20 of whom had been sent to death row. All told, over
2,000 exonerations, including 200 from death row and
including those not involving DNA, have occurred in the
United States during that same period. While we are proud of
our work, we've only scratched the surface.
Wrongful convictions happen for eight reasons. Not all
are neatly defined, and they usually combine with others to
produce a bad result. In some of the more egregious cases, the
poor defendant unwittingly "hit for the cycle" and got nailed
with all eight.
In no particular order of importance, they are:
Bad Police Work. Most cops are honest, hard-working
professionals who aren't paid a high salary. However, there
are a not insignificant number of cases in which police
officers have hidden, altered, or fabricated evidence, lied on
the witness stand, cut deals with snitches in return for bogus
testimony, intimidated and threatened witnesses, coerced
confessions, or manipulated eyewitness identifications.
Prosecutorial Misconduct. Most prosecutors are honest,
hard-working professionals who aren't paid a high salary at
least not compared to many other lawyers. However, there
have been cases in which prosecutors hid exculpatory
evidence, encouraged witnesses to commit perjury, lied to
jurors, judges, and defense lawyers, used the testimony of
bogus experts, or ignored relevant evidence beneficial to the
accused
False Confessions. Most jurors find it impossible to believe
that a suspect would confess to a serious crime he didn't
commit. Yet the average citizen, if taken to a basement room
and subjected to ten consecutive hours of abusive
that a suspect would confess to a serious crime he didn't
commit. Yet the average citizen, if taken to a basement room
and subjected to ten consecutive hours of abusive
interrogation tactics by experienced cops, might be surprised
at what they would say under extreme duress. Of the 330
people exonerated by DNA from 1989 to 2015, about 25
percent gave bogus confessions after lengthy interrogations.
Virtually every one recanted soon after.
Faulty Eyewitness Identification. More often than not, those
who witness violent acts have trouble accurately recalling the
facts and identifying those involved. Yet police regularly use
physical and photo lineups, and these are often manipulated
in various ways to focus suspicion on favored suspects.
Jailhouse Snitches. This tactic involves one of the oldest and
dirtiest tricks used by police and prosecutors. In every jail
there is a career criminal staring at a long sentence. For
leniency, he can be persuaded to lie to the jury and describe
in great detail the confession Overheard from the accused,
usually a cell mate. And if he performs well enough on the
stand the authorities mi t allow him to walk free.
Bad Lawyering. Those accused of serious crimes rarely
have money. Most are represented by good public defenders,
but too many get stuck with court-appointed lawyers with
little or no experience. Capital cases are complex, the stakes
are enormous, and all too often the defense lawyers are in
over their heads.
Sleeping Judges. Judges are supposed to be impartial
referees intent on ensuring fair trials. They should exclude
confessions that are inconsistent with the physical evidence
and obtained by questionable means, exclude the testimony
of career felons with dubious motives, require prosecutors to
produce exculpatory evidence, and question the credentials
and testimony of all experts outside the presence of the jury.
Unfortunately, judges do not always do what they should. The
reasons are many and varied, but the fact that many
judgeships are elected positions doesn't help. They are
conscious of their upcoming reelection and how the decisions
they make might affect it. And of those judges who are
appointed and not elected, the majority are former
prosecutors.
Junk Science. This is a major reason for wrongful
convictions. Over the past five decades, our courtrooms have Junk Science. This is a major reason for wrongful
convictions. Over the past five decades, our courtrooms have
been flooded with an avalanche of unreliable, even atrocious
"science." Experts of all varieties and with qualifications that
were dubious at best and fraudulent at worst have peddled
(for a fee, of course) all manner of damning theories of guilt
based on their alleged scientific analysis of hair, fibers, bite
marks, arson, boot prints, blood spatters, and ballistics. Of the
330 people exonerated by DNA tests from 1989 to 2015, 71
percent were convicted based on forensic testimony, much of
which was flawed, unreliable, exaggerated, and sometimes
even outright fabricated.
University of Virginia law professor Brandon Garrett has
studied virtually all of the trial transcripts of wrongful
convictions that were later exposed by DN A-based
exonerations. He writes: "There is a national epidemic of
overstated forensic testimon
with a stead
stream of overstated forensic testimony, with a steady stream of
criminal convictions being overturned as the shoddiness of
decades' worth of physical evidence comes to light. The true
scope of the problem is only now coming into focus."
This book tells the story of two of the most ambitious and
daring experts ever allowed in a courtroom. One was a
controversial forensic pathologist who once boasted of
performing over two thousand autopsies in a single year. The
other, his sidekick, was a small-town dentist who brazenly
and without formal training or study assumed the role of an
expert in many other fields, such as ballistics, gunshot
reconstruction, "tool mark" patterns, and the analysis not
only of teeth and bite marks but wound patterns, bruises, and
fingernail scratches. Together, they tag-teamed their way
through rape and murder trials throughout Mississippi and
Louisiana, accumulating an impressive string of convictions,
several of which have now been overturned. Some are still
being litigated. Many others, sadly, seem destined to stand.
This is a maddening story of a broken system, one in
which prosecutors allowed—even encouraged—flawed
forensic testimony because it was skillfully molded to fit their
theories of guilt. Time and again, over two decades, elected which prosecutors allowed—even encouraged—flawed
forensic testimony because it was skillfully molded to fit their
theories or guilt. Time and again, over two decades, elected
judges permitted these two men to take the stand and
convince unsophisticated jurors that science was on the side
of the state. As professional testifiers, they honed their
performances and became thoroughly convincing.
While breathtaking in its scope, the work these two men
did within the justice system is also heartbreaking in its
devastation. No one really knows the true extent of the
damage. No one knows how many innocent women and men
have been convicted in trials in which these two testified, nor
is the truth likely ever to be discovered. And it seems nearly
impossible to think the state of Mississippi will investigate,
audit, or take responsibility.
As you turn the pages, you will often be tempted to close
this book and either laugh or cry or yell that what happened in Mississippi cannot possibly be true. But it is. It happened in
plain view and with the complicity of many who were sworn
to uphold the law. It is my hope that this book might inspire
those with the necessary will and persistence to finally bring
justice for the men and women around the country who have
been wrongfully convicted and to fix the system so that
nothing like this can ever happen again.
John Grisham
PS: In the spirit of full disclosure, I am compelled to accept
my share of the responsibility. As an elected member of the
Mississippi legislature back in the 1980s, I remember the
struggle to establish and fund the Office of the State Medical
Examiner. It was a thorny issue that wouldn't go away, but it
was far from the most pressing matters we faced each year. I
have no idea how I voted on the various bills, but I do
remember being embarrassed by our antiquated system of
elected coroners. I recall being frustrated by the state's
inability to find and keep a medical examiner. Its failure to do
so was a major reason some of the characters in this story
I first traveled to Mississippi in 2005 to report on the case of
Cory Maye, a tragic story about overzealous policing and the
drug war—a subject that would later become the focus of my
first book. While investigating that case, I stumbled onto this
much bigger story, one that covers two decades and
thousands of trials, several of them death penalty cases.
Cory Maye had been convicted the previous year for
killing Ron Jones, a Prentiss, Mississippi, police officer, during
a drug raid. Maye, who was home with his young daughter
when the twelve-thirty-a.m. raid went down, claimed he
mistook the cops who broke down his door for criminal
intruders.
The raid on Maye certainly seemed to have been a
mistake. Maye lived with his girlfriend and daughter on one
side of a duplex. On the other side lived a man named Jamie
The police tound a signiticant quantity ot
drugs in Smith's
home.
Cory Maye had no prior criminal record, didn't know his
neighbor, and had no significant quantity of drugs in his
home (the police found a single burnt marijuana cigarette in
the apartment—which would othenvisc have merited a $50
fine). But Maye had just killed a cop. He was black; the cop
was white. And this wasn't just any cop: Ron Jones was also
the son of the town's police chief.
Maye was arrested and charged with capital murder.
Medical examiner Steven Hayne performed the autopsy
on Jones and later testified at Maye's trial. Hayne's testimony
was problematic. Based on Hayne's testimony about the
trajectory the bullet took through Jones's body, the
prosecutor argued to the jury that Maye must have been
standing when he shot Jones, not lying on the floor in fear, as
he had said he was. The claim made it appear as though Maye
had been lying in wait to ambush Jones. In truth, a number of
variables can affect a bullet's trajectory through a body, most
notably the victim's position when shot. Moreover, bullets
found in the door frame of Maye's home had a clear upward
trajectory. A bullet's path through a stationary object like a
door frame was a much more likely indication of Maye's
osition than its ath throu a movin human bein .
Given that Maye's guilt or innocence hinged on whether
the jury believed him when he said he didn't know Jones was
a police officer, the doubt prosecutors cast on Maye's story by
way of Hayne's testimony was critical.
Hayne wasn't outright wrong in Maye's case; he was just
slippery. He never came right out and said that Maye could
only have been standing. Instead, he carefully worded his
answers, allowing the prosecutor to weave the testimony into
the state's closing argument for the jury, all while still
retaining plausible deniability.
Maye was convicted and sentenced to death. He was later
given a new trial when the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled
that he should have been permitted to argue that he was
defending his daughter's life on the night of the raid. In 2011,
after ten years behind bars, he accepted a plea bargain in
Given the way prosecutors were able to use Hayne's
testimony to mislead jurors during Maye's trial, I began to
wonder if they had also done so in others. So I asked around. I
first spoke with Maye's attorney and public defender, Bob
Evans, who recalled the case of Tonya Ward, a woman whose
skeletonized remains had been found in a wooded area and
had been picked at by animals. Hayne testified she had died
from strangulation, an improbable diagnosis when there's no
soft tissue on the body to examine and no way to tell if any
trauma done to her body had come before or after her death.
Other attorneys across Mississippi had similar stories. I
called other medical examiners across the South. And then
police officials and other forensic analysts. On a couple of
occasions, I had barely finished explaining that I was working
on a story about a questionable medical examiner before the
source would interrupt and ask if I was referring to Hayne.
Many wouldn't talk on the record, citing Hayne's reputation
for litigiousness.
But some did. Ken Winter, former head of the Mississippi
Association of Chiefs of police, told mc that he was most
troubled by the sheer quantity of autopsies Hayne performed,
which he called "way too many to do... in the manner they
should be done." One former state official in Mississippi
Other attorneys across Mississippi had similar stories. I
called other medical examiners across the South. And then
police officials and other forensic analysts. On a couple of
occasions, I had barely finished explaining that I was working
on a story about a questionable medical examiner before the
source would interrupt and ask if I was referring to Hayne.
Many wouldn't talk on the record, citing Hayne's reputation
for litigiousness.
But some did. Ken Winter, former head of the Mississippi
Association of Chiefs of police, told mc that he was most
troubled by the sheer quantity of autopsies Hayne performed,
which he called "way too many to do... in the manner they
should be done." One former state official in Mississippi
recalled being pressured by district attorneys to change his
opinion based on Hayne's analysis. And he could think of two
specific murder cases in which Hayne's opinion was "way
outside the purview of a forensic pathologist." The official
was also aghast at Hayne's sloppy practices. 'There were
frequently test tubes sent to the lab with the wrong name on
them," he said. "I reached a point where we just collected all
the trace evidence at the scene."
Former Columbus,
Mississippi, police chief J. D. Sanders also had stories. Sanders
wrote a weekly column in the local newspaper. After a series
of columns in which he criticized Hayne and the death
investigation system, he received a flood of feedback—both
public and private—from coroners and prosecutors across the
state. The anger, virulence, and even death threats in some of
the responses convinced Sanders that things were worse than
he imagined. "There's no question in my mind that there are
innocent people doing time at parchman Penitentiary due to
the testimony of Dr. Hayne," Sanders told me. "There may
even be some on death row."
In October 2007, I published an investigation of Hayne in
Reason magazine, along with an accompanying essay in the
Wall Street Journal. After the story ran, a local TV station
confronted Hayne outside his office about the articles. He
promised to sue both me and the Wail Street Journal. The
couldn't remember.
In the ten years since, I've written dozens of stories about
Hayne. I also began writing about Hayne's sidekick, Michael
West, the dentist, bite mark analyst, and—in my view—a
person who should not have been allowed in a courtroom.
The two men dominated the Mississippi death investigation
system for twenty years. West testified in dozens of cases,
Hayne in thousands. Until and unless the state engages in a
thorough, top-down investigation of their work, we may
never know the extent of the damage they may have done. So
far, the people with the power to initiate such an
investigation haven't shown much interest.
TUCKER CARRINGTON
TUCKER CARRINGTON
In 2007, I was hired to found and direct the Mississippi
Innocence Project, based at the University of Mississippi Law
School in Oxford. I packed up my family and office in
Washington, DC, and moved to north Mississippi. On my first
day at work, I read through some opinions handed down the
week before by the Mississippi Supreme Court. was startled
by the first case I saw. Not only had the state's expert witness
given what I considered to be unfounded forensic testimony,
the trial court had admitted it in a way that seemed fairly
routine. The expert? Steven Hayne. The defendant was
convicted, and the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed.
One of my first tasks as director of a new entity at the law
school was to let people know we existed, and to announce
our upcoming inaugural fundraiser. The event featured John
Grisham—who with his family had provided some of the
funding for the new venture—and fellow novelist Scott
Turow. We sent a mailer to lawyers, politicians, law
enforcement officials, and other prominent figures across the
state. After a few days the responses started pouring in, and it
was clear that my staff and I had our work cut out for us.
was clear that my staff and I had our work cut out for us.
Laurence Mellon, the district attorney for scvcral counties in
the northwest corner of the Delta, wrotc back for proof of my
claim—which by then was common knowledge for anyone
working in the criminal justice system—that DNA evidence
had exonerated more than two hundred people. Somehow
that fact, combined with the establishment of the project,
meant that many prosecutors across the state, who were
graduates of the University of Mississippi School of Law, were
"naturally concerned that the law school is impugning our
integrity." District Attorney Jim Powell wrote a letter, too. He
noted that over the course of America's 230-year history, and
among its population of three hundred million, "there is a
claim of only 200 wrongful convictions." "Where is the
problem?" Powell wondered. He also suggested that instead
of an innocence ro'ect, the law school should start a "the
among its population of three hundred million, "there is a
claim of only 200 wrongful convictions." "Where is the
problem?" Powell wondered. He also suggested that instead
or an innocence project, the law school should start a "the
guilty bastard got off scott free project."
To the extent that these two prosecutors' views were
indicative of others', Mississippi's top law enforcement
officials seemed unwilling to consider the possibility that
Mississippi's justice system might occasionally convict an
innocent man. Within a year they'd be proven wrong, though
hardly chastened.
Over the next decade or so, as we continued our respective
work in journalism and law, Hayne's and West's names and
deeds kept showing up. Occasionally our work on these cases
would overlap, and we'd find ourselves in conversation about
new revelations, old cases, and the state's perpetual
obstinacy. It finally occurred to us that only a book could give
this story the full airing it deserved.
ne',v revelations, cases, Slate'S
obstinacy, II finally occurred 10 uS only a book could gi
and, in response, increasingly strident law-and-or cr rhetoric
from politicians, pop culture, and the media. In the fifteen
years that preceded Kennedy Brewer's arrest, violent crime in
the United States increased by 80 percent. John Dilulio, the
director of George H. W. Bush's White House Faith-Based
Initiatives, warned that society risked becoming infested with
"super-predators": young, amoral killers emerging from "the
youngest, biggest and baddest generation any society has
ever known." In response, lawmakers lengthened prison
sentences with mandatory minimums and swelled the ranks
of police officers on the streets. In some urban areas
governors called out the National Guard. politicians rushed to
outdo one another with ever-more-draconian crime policy.
Most importantly for this story, the doctrine ofhabeas corpus
the mechanism by which prisoners can seek relief from
unlawful detention that dates back to the Magna Carta—was
Mississippi did not distinguish itself. Or it did, but not
well. Governor Kirk Fordice pledged at the time to make the
state "the capital of capital punishment." The state's largest
newspaper ran regular editorials lamenting the fact that
drawn-out appeals were preventing officials from executing
more people more quickly. Politicians, columnists, and tough-
on-crime activists pushed to expand the death penalty to
include rape, child abuse, and drug dealing.
This was the climate in which Kennedy Brewer and Levon
Brooks were convicted. But the full context for this story goes
back much earlier than the 1990s. Since Reconstruction,
Mississippi has executed 809 people, not including
extrajudicial lynchings. Of those executed under law, 642
were black. Most were hanged, though the state now kills
with lethal injection, as does most of the rest of the country.
Noxubee County—where Brewer and Brooks lived, were
arrested, and were tried—housed its gallows in the now
defunct county jail. It has since been converted into the
county library. The gallows trap door is still there, as is the
garrote hook—right next to the genealogy section.
Before getting to the Brooks and Brewer cases, though,
we'll delve into the historical context that made their stories
ossiblc. For decades, whitc Southerners fou t intc ration we'll delve into the historical context that made their stories
possible. For decades, whitc Southerners fought integration
and tried to prescrvc white supremacy with racial violence,
most notoriously through lynching. Mississippi's death
investigation system evolved into a powerful tool to help
cover up those atrocities. By most counts, the state led the
country in lynchings. Over and over again, elected coroners
deliberately covered up racial violence by convening a
coroner*s jury of like-minded men who would inevitably
conclude that obvious murders had been, in fact, accidental
killings, suicides, or natural deaths. When a coroner's jury did
occasionally determine that a lynching had been a homicide,
little to no effort was made to ascertain the identity of the
killers or to bring them to justice.
When lynching became less common, the system that
aided and abetted it still remained. Though some states
moved on from the coroner system, others, including
When lynching became less common, the system that
aided and abetted it still remained. Though some states
moved on from the coroner system, others, including
Mississippi, allowed it to persist. As a new era of public
officials assumed power, they used the system for their own
ends—to rack up convictions, to manipulate the court system,
or simply to make a lot of money. By the mid-1990s, it even
became politically advantageous for some state officials to
reinvestigate cold civil rights murders and try to bring racist
perpetrators of decades-old crimes to justice. Here, too, the
death investigation system proved useful. Steven Hayne
testified in a few such cases. The point here IS not that every
official in Mississippi's criminal justice and its death
investigation systems was or is motivated by bigotry. Hayne,
for example, not only assisted prosecutors in those old civil
rights cases but was also married for a short time to a black
detective. Nevertheless, the system in which he, Michael
West, and the state's coroners operated was built on racism,
and the new victims still tended to bc disproportionately
poor and black, with the effects, though better concealed, just
as pernicious.
This badly flawed Mississippi death investigation system
was then infused with another roblem that has more
was then in ed with another problem that has more
recently received national attention: dubious forensics. Since
the late 1980s, DNA analysis has exonerated hundreds of
innocent prisoners. It has also revealed the extent to which
unsound forensic science—and improper claims about
legitimate forensic disciplines—played a major role in those
cases. But exonerations resulting from DNA testing provide
only a limited glimpse of the problem. Just 5 to 10 percent of
criminal cases involve biological evidence that can be
subjected to DNA testing. In the other 90 to 95 percent of
cases, DNA doesn't exist, has degraded, or has been lost. But
the same unscientific forensic disciplines used in the cases
overturned by DNA testing have undoubtedly also tainted
nan-DNA cases, and probably at about the same rate.
We like to think that our system of justice is unmatched
in its guarantees of fairness. Our democracy is too strong, our
courts too fair, our prosecutors and judges too conscientious
to allow innocents to rot away in prison or be executed. Judge
Learned Hand wrote as much in 1923: "Our dangers do not lie
in too little tenderness to the accused. Our procedure has
always been haunted by the ghost of the innocent man
convicted. It is an unreal dream." That sort of resolute
confidence in American justice persisted through the 1990s.
For many, it still persists today. To date, the US Supreme
Court has denied thirty petitions for certiorari filed by
prisoners later shown to be factually innocent. Many of them
were victims of faulty forensic science. The record of lower
courts around the nation is worse.
The primary antagonists in this story are Steven Hayne,
the state's former de facto medical examiner, and Michael
West, a prolific forensic dentist. A third is the state of
Mississippi itself—not its people, but its institutions. In a
larger sense, blame also rests on the courts—both statc and
federal—the media, and the professional organizations that
not only failed to prevent this catastrophe but did very little
even after it was clear that something was terribly wrong.
Hayne in particular has maintained that he was merely a
bit player in all of this—a hardworking doctor who did what
he was asked and had no control over the design of a system
role he played in preserving the system at various points in
this story, but there is at least some truth to it. Certainly no
one would accuse Hayne of aziness. He testified all over the
state and typically worked seven days a week, often until the
wee hours of the morning. It's also true that if Hayne and
West hadn't been the central figures in this story, the system
and its misplaced incentives would have produced other
figures just like them. Indeed, before Hayne's tenure, it
already had.
Most of Hayne's autopsy reports were uncontroversial—as
was most of his court testimony. And a large majority of
people his testimony helped put away were undoubtedly
guilty. Moreover, anyone who did the number of autopsies
Hayne did was bound to make some mistakes. A defender of
Hayne might argue that it's unfair to focus on his mistakes
But that argument is both a defense of Hayne and an
indictment of him. As you continue reading, it's important to
remember that this story didn't happen by accident—it
happened by design. No one forced him to take on the
number of autopsies he did. The death investigation system
in Mississippi is designed to allow coroners, prosecutors, and
law enforcement officials to use their favored medical
examiners. Hayne didn't have to be the doctor whom
Mississippi DAs and coroners favored for nearly two decades.
He emerged as their favorite because of his work product.
And for that, he is certainly open to scrutiny.
Michael West is a different story. As a longtime associate
of Hayne, he was aided and abetted by trial courts throughout
the state that seemed more interested in ensuring the
admission of his novel—and often crucial—forensic testimony
in criminal prosecutions than they did in rigorously assessing
the bases of his claims. For his part, West took advantage of
the opportunity, and then some.
Lawyers for Brooks and Brewer have argued that Hayne
and West's acts over this period of time were intentional.
Recently, a federal appeals court opinion found that while
they were mistaken, there was no evidence of an intent to
fabricate evidence. It's not our intent—and frankly it would
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