"Mississippi
was one of a handful of states to hold statewide elections last night.
Regular readers of The Watch will recognize a couple of the names on the
ballot. First, the good news: Longtime district attorney Forrest Allgood
was defeated by
challenger Scott Colom. Allgood had been DA for the state’s 16th
judicial district since 1989. During that time, he became one of the
most aggressive prosecutors in the country and a vocal defender of
notorious medical examiner Steven Hayne and the disgraced bite mark
“expert” Michael West. Allgood continued to both use and defend West
long after he’d been widely considered a fraud, even within the
already-suspect community of bite mark analysts. He, in fact, once
compared West to Copernicus, calling him a man of science widely
misunderstood by his contemporaries..........Like Allgood,
Hood has been a staunch defender of Hayne over the years. (Hood often
utilized Hayne himself when he was a district attorney.) In fact, when
Hayne was effectively fired from conducting state autopsies a few years
ago, Hood
led a failed effort to bring him back. Hood did recently acknowledge West’s credibility problems, but he
has done very little to address them, and, in fact, his office is still defending convictions won with West’s testimony, including at least
one death penalty conviction."
Radley
Balko blogs about criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties
for The Washington Post. He is the author of the book "Rise of the
Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/11/04/election-results-one-of-americas-worst-prosecutors-lost-last-night-but-one-of-its-worst-attorneys-general-won/