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

I've lived in the midwest and west and have always leaned conservative. But after reading THE CADAVER KING AND THE COUNTRY DENTIST, I know I'd be a liberal if I lived in Mississippi. What an eye-opening book this is!

The "cadaver king" is Dr. Stephen Hayne, and the "country dentist" is Dr. Michael West. The two of them acted as expert witnesses in the majority of Mississippi's death investigation court cases for nearly 20 years. Hayne performed an impossible number of autopsies and then claimed to see whatever prosecutors suspected. West gave unscientific bite-mark testimony to suit prosecutors' suspicions and also pretended to be an expert in a variety of other unscientific areas. And Mississippi courts accepted it all for many years show more and sent many, many people to prison as a result.

THE CADAVER KING AND THE COUNTRY DENTIST concentrates on two of those cases in particular, both affected by Hayne's and West's testimony. In each case, a three-year-old girl was raped and murdered in Mississippi. Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks were accused of the crimes. They were innocent, but, in large part on the basis of Hayne's and West's testimony, they were convicted and spent many years in jail, Brewer on death row.

So much research went into this very interesting book. I highly recommend it. show less

As someone who was raised Catholic and taught by nuns, my abiding problem is always figuring out how not to be overwhelmed by shame and guilt. The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist explores what happens when you've got a legal system run by people who are seemingly incapable of feeling either emotion. Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington analyse the wrongful murder convictions of two Black men in a small Mississippi town in the early 1990s. Their respective convictions, and the fact that they spent long years behind bars for murders that they didn't commit, is the result of racism, the good ol' boy network, and forensic analysis that was either incompetently carried out, based on junk science, or both. (And much more forensic science show more is bunk than the average viewer of CSI, etc., might think.)

This is not another prurient installment in the true crime genre. It is, instead, a fairly meticulous indictment of wilful systemic injustice. In other words: Americans, your court system is fucked. show less

There's a fundamental mismatch between science as a discipline and the legal system that would really like to use scientific evidence to support its conclusions, and this book makes a terrifically thorough case that forensic science as it currently exists and is practiced is the worst of both worlds. By focusing on the egregious case of Stephen Hayne and Michael West (and the Mississippi legal system that enabled their corruption) Balko and Carrington present a very bleak view of the likelihood of justice in our current system.

This is an extremely disturbing story about two medical charlatans who have made a career out of sending innocent men to jail. Although these two men are unquestionably the villains of the piece, this is really a story about how the broken criminal justice system has allowed racism, poverty, and laziness to rule the day. This is a true horror story about the junk science of bite mark analysis and the way a corrupt legal system harnessed the unabashed unabashed quackery in order to funnel human chattel through the system and hopefully to the execution chamber.

The two titular villains have careers so salacious as to be almost absurd. This is a disturbing cautionary tale that any potential juror can benefit from. It's important to question show more all authority figures and ponder what their connection is to the judicial player in question. Obviously, lawyers and judges should be cautious in what they allow into the courtroom but this book is also proof that judges are not immune to the charm effect of a good con man. show less

Mississippi is often the focus of inhumane convictions, shoddy police work, and heartbreaking stories in documentaries, podcasts, and news articles. These stories, far too numerous and spread out over too long of a duration, show the state deserves its reputation for ignorance, unfair bias, racism, and lazy police work in many of these cases.

Sometimes we get the viewpoint of a truly deplorable human being who details his sexual abuses, murders, reasonings, and actions, blaming it on ""the voices"". He may indeed hear them, but offers little excuse for listening to them.

I did dig the mention and introduction from John Grisham and more information on the Innocent Project.

These men, professional testifiers who may as well be noted as show more professional con artists and sociopaths, is as sickening and terrifying as it is interesting.

If I had to name a top negative of this story, I'd say it feels like it hops around on important topics randomly and interrupts its own flow at times. You do get random education on things you hadn't considered - their section on Forensic Investigations was especially interesting, including the low pay of the position and the chronic shortage of staff. show less

This nonfiction focuses on a coroner in Mississippi and his dentist cohort, and on two major cases of innocent men found guilty of murder because of them. It covers other cases and other people as well, and a great deal about forensics and pseudoscience. The two main cases, both horrible murders of very small children, is heartbreaking, but the authors do not exploit the facts, do not use their murders gratuitously. This book is a great balance of the highly personal and the general. DNA has helped exonerate many innocent, but there are many others where DNA is not available. And the retrial obstructions can be onerous if not impossible to overcome. And if you were accused to a crime against a person in Mississippi, chances are the show more dentist will determine you bit the victim. If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

The Innocence Project and others like it have helped many, but it is just a drop on the bucket.

I listened to the Audible edition of this book, and the narrator was excellent. This is not an emotionally easy book to read or listen to, but it is well written, clearly written, fascinating, and necessary for anyone who believes in justice. And if you are ever in Mississippi, especially if you are a poor black man, don't ever get arrested because your chances of being found guilty are remarkably high. show less

This book is a comprehensive, incredibly well researched exploration of the intertwining of politics, law, justice/injustice, and racism in the deep south.

I read a lot of true crime and sociology, but I've never read a book that explores corruption within our legal system in regards to our coroners and medical examiners. I'm embarrassed to admit that I never considered this angle. The science, we like to think, should be the trustworthy aspect of our justice system. Radley Balko shows us, without question, that all "facts" can be manipulated, or simply eliminated, when convenient.

What I felt while reading this book was total outrage, disgust, and sorrow. The events portrayed are difficult to align with any conception of justice, even show more as flawed as I knew the system to be.

While I have immense respect for the author's undertaking, I did have some problems with the way the book was put together. The story revolves around Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West, as the title suggests, but really this book takes on the entire modern-day political and legal system in rural Mississippi. We have a whole lot of people moving in and out, including judges, lawyers, politicians, medical examiners, doctors, victims, and the accused.

The scope of this book is enormous and at times lacks focus. This was the crux of the problem for me. The author occasionally takes us wandering into areas that are interesting, but not pertinent. For instance, we're given lengthy education on the history of coroners from the time of the Crusades. Throughout the book, we seem to wobble in and out of the timeline, jumping from one case to another, and then over to a side bit, and then on to something else. Keeping up with all the players, their stories, the cases, and the various tidbits makes for an exhausting reading experience.

In fairness to the author, the magnitude of these events had to be difficult to wrangle into a neat and concise story. This was not one or two people caught in corruption; this was the entire system, from its core on out. The entire mess is so badly entangled that unraveling it to find the core problem demands we pull out all the many threads. And so I recommend reading this book because, until you see all the pieces, you won't believe the whole picture could be real.

*I received an ebook copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.* show less