PASSAGE OF THE DAY: New York Times review by Elie Mystal: "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."
STORY:"10 Books to Help You Get Over a Reading Slump," by Reporter Elizabeth Held, published be 'Time' on April 26, 2022.
GIST: Even the most avid readers sometimes find themselves in a slump where no book feels quite right. Especially in times of uncertainty, it can be challenging to find a book capable of getting you to put down your phone and stop doomscrolling.
If you’re in a slump right now, grab one (or more) of these books and see if it can help you get back on track.
The Cadaver King and The Country Dentist, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington
The Cadaver King and The Country Dentist is equal parts enraging and engrossing, a mixture that is sure to keep you turning pages. The writers—veteran criminal justice journalist Radley Balko and founding director of the Mississippi Innocence Project Tucker Carrington—carefully document the way Mississippi’s death investigation system, a relic of the Jim Crow era, keeps innocent people in jail. They focus on Dr. Steven Hayne, a medical examiner who conducted hundreds of autopsies each year, and Dr. Michael West, a self-proclaimed “forensic dentist.” Both men provided misleading, if not outright fraudulent, testimony at countless trials, causing innocent Mississippians, often from poor and underserved communities, to be imprisoned while letting murderers and rapists go free. True crime fans, in particular, won’t want to miss this one.
https://time.com/6170414/books-to-break-reading-slump/
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Read also Elie Mystal's review of 'The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist, published by The New York Times, on March 39, 2018... At link below: (Elie Mystal is the executive editor of Above the Law and a contributing editor for “More Perfect” on WNYC.)
THE CADAVER KING AND THE COUNTRY DENTIST
A True Story of Injustice in the American South
By Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington
416 pp. PublicAffairs. $28.
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."
The entire review can be read at:
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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/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
