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

In 2008, two innocent men, Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to thirty years in prison for the rape and murder of two three-year-old girls in rural Mississippi. Meanwhile, the real killer remained free. The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist explores how the criminal justice system allowed this to happen, highlighting the roles of Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West, who were the go-to experts for prosecutors and helped put countless Mississippians in prison. The book argues that bad forensics, structural racism, and institutional failures were at fault, raising questions about our ability to address these crucial issues.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 416 pages
Publication date: 11 April 2019
Publisher: PublicAffairs,U.S.

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.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist 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.

Weight: 428g
Dimension: 154 x 229 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781541774056