PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "There’s no question that Hayne and West thrived in a system that was created and honed during Jim Crow, and that for decades was used to reinforce the segregated social order. There’s also no question that the system’s problems continue to disproportionately affect minority and poor populations across the state. But no one has described Hayne as a racist. … Instead, Hayne could be described more as an opportunist.” The bigotry in our criminal justice system is one of its key features, not an unfortunate bug. Mississippi wouldn’t allow quack science to convict the wrong people if white citizens primarily bore the burden. The namesake “bad guys” in this book are allowed to exist because their work puts black men behind bars, not in spite of it. What’s the remedy for a person who has been convicted based on so-called science that we now know to be faulty, corrupt or both? One doesn’t need a law degree to answer that question."
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BOOK REVIEW: "The Epidemic of Wrongful Convictions in America."...Above The Law Executive Editor Elie Mystal takes on 'The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A true story of Injustice in the American South," by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington, published on March 30, 2018, for The New York Times. ( Elie Mystal is the executive editor of Above the Law and a contributing editor for “More Perfect” on WNYC.)
GIST: "America’s
bottomless fascination with “true crime” stories and “murder porn” has
been capitalized on by some content creators seeking to inspire changes
in the criminal justice system. But the genre tends to let the system
itself off the hook. The titillating and gory details of any one case
narrow readers’ focus onto particular bad actors, relegating law
enforcement to a largely offscreen menace. Literature as a tool for
social and legal reform further requires the reader to accept the
author’s assertion that the highlighted case produced an incorrect
result, which is a big ask in a country that can’t even agree on whether
Han Solo shot first. “The
Cadaver King and the Country Dentist,” by the Washington Post
journalist Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington, a law professor at the
University of Mississippi, avoids these generic problems. There is no
murder mystery. The book details the wrongful convictions of two men,
Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, in the separate murders of two girls in
the same rural Mississippi town in the early 1990s. But the real killer
of both 3-year-olds is revealed to the reader before the wrong men are
even put on trial. We are also spared the anguish of wondering if the
system will ever get it right, for we know the men have already been
freed thanks to the work of the nonprofit criminal exoneration
organization the Innocence Project.
The
crime having been solved early on, 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. Mississippi
would have been better served by the actual actors from “CSI”
conducting its forensic investigations than the autopsy specialist
Steven Hayne and his “sidekick,” the bite-mark analyst Michael West. The
book isn’t even really about exposing these men, as they’re already
disgraced. Instead, Balko and Carrington have written a cry for help:
“What happened in Mississippi may be the most wide-reaching scandal to
date. Few states have encountered revelations that strike as forcefully
at the very foundation of its criminal justice system. And few states’
public officials have shown less concern or taken less action after
having learned of the problem.” 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 — whether our society’s tendency to incarcerate innocent
individuals results from basic incompetence, or bald racism. The
authors propose an answer: “There’s no question that Hayne and West
thrived in a system that was created and honed during Jim Crow, and that
for decades was used to reinforce the segregated social order. There’s
also no question that the system’s problems continue to
disproportionately affect minority and poor populations across the
state. But no one has described Hayne as a racist. … Instead, Hayne
could be described more as an opportunist.” The
bigotry in our criminal justice system is one of its key features, not
an unfortunate bug. Mississippi wouldn’t allow quack science to convict
the wrong people if white citizens primarily bore the burden. The
namesake “bad guys” in this book are allowed to exist because their work puts black men behind bars, not in spite of it. What’s
the remedy for a person who has been convicted based on so-called
science that we now know to be faulty, corrupt or both? One doesn’t need
a law degree to answer that question. Common sense or a modicum of
human decency suggests that those found guilty based on bad evidence
deserve justice. But to grant all such retrials would be too much for
this country’s criminal courts to bear."
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
