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Author Balko, Radley, 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.

Publication Info. New York : PublicAffairs, 2018.
©2018

Copies

Location Call No. Public Note Status
 Davis Adult Nonfiction  614.10976 BAL    CHECK SHELVES
Edition First edition.
Description xxii, 391 pages ; 25 cm
Content type text txt rdacontent
Format volume nc rdacarrier
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-391).
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.
Contents The murder of Courtney Smith -- The murder of Christine Jackson -- Investigating the dead -- At the hands of persons unknown -- Setting the stage for the Cadaver King -- Rise of a fiefdom -- The West phenomenon -- Entrenchment -- The trial of Levon Brooks -- Keep that woman under control -- Vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction -- Prayers for relief -- The unraveling -- Redemption and insurrection -- No reckoning.
Subject Hayne, Steven (Forensic pathologist)
West, Michael (Dentist)
Brooks, Levon, 1959- -- Trials, litigation, etc.
Brewer, Kennedy -- Trials, litigation, etc.
Criminal justice, Administration of -- Mississippi.
Judicial error -- Mississippi.
Trials (Rape) -- Mississippi.
Trials (Murder) -- Mississippi.
HISTORY / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV).
TRUE CRIME / Forensics.
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Criminology.
Genre True crime stories.
Added Author Carrington, Tucker (W. Tucker), author.
Related To Online version: Balko, Radley. Cadaver king and the country dentist. First edition. New York : PublicAffairs, [2017] 9781610396929 (DLC) 2017011704
ISBN 9781610396912
161039691X