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| Categories | Americas |
| Author | John Grisham |
| Publisher | PublicAffairs; Illustrated edition (March 12, 2019) |
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 416 pages |
| Item Weight | 15.1 ounces |
| Dimensions |
6 x 1.04 x 9 inches |
I. Book introduction
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.
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.
Editorial Reviews
- “Of all the tragedy documented in this book, surely the most pernicious is the unacknowledged progression of discriminatory policies in the American criminal justice system. The black men at the story’s center were not snatched out of a Mississippi jail and lynched. They were falsely imprisoned. They were haunted by state efforts to execute them for three decades. This is a powerful and instructive story, masterfully told by Balko and Carrington.”―IbramX. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from theBeginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
- “The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist paints a devastating picture of Mississippi’s ongoing systemic abuse of junk evidence by medical examiners and highlights the myriad ways the current legal and political systems reward certain and speedy convictions. This carefully constructed and highly-readable account also reveals the ways in which catastrophic and almost comic expert errors can lead to hasty conclusions, ruined lives, and may take years to correct, if they are corrected at all.”―DahliaLithwick, Senior Editor, Slate
- “If, like most Americans, you think that our legal system protects innocent people from being falsely convicted, be prepared to have your faith shattered. In horrifying detail, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington show how structural racism, junk science, overzealous prosecutors, compliant judges, and a bloodthirsty press conspired to wreck lives and convict the innocent. Grounded in Mississippi courtrooms, but with national implications, this bookwill leave you outraged and hungry for change.”―JamesForman, Jr., Professor, Yale Law School and author of Locking Up OurOwn: Crime and Punishment in Black America
- “A haunting true-crime tale of systemic incompetence and racism…Balko and Carrington have written a cry for help.”―The New York Times
- “A superb work of investigative reporting….Balko and Carrington combine expertise, industry and outrage into a searing narrative.”―Wall Street Journal
- “A horrifying exposé of how a few individuals can infect an entire state’s criminal justice system.”―Kirkus Reviews, *Starred Review*
- “A clear and shocking portrait of the structural failings of the U.S. criminal justice system… This eminently readable book builds a hard-to-ignore case for comprehensive criminal justice reform.”―Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review*
- “Through the intensive scrutiny of how the men were speedily tried, convicted, and then released after years in prison, the authors uncover an unholy alliance of racist cops and prosecutors with questionable death investigations and misapplied forensics. This work should spark both admiration and outrage-and, one hopes, reform.”―Booklist
About John Grisham
John Grisham (born February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas) is an American novelist, lawyer and former member of the 7th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives, known for his popular legal thrillers. According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 28 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three authors to have sold two million copies on a first printing.
Grisham graduated from Mississippi State University and earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981. He practised criminal law for about a decade and served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990.
Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in June 1989, four years after he began writing it. Grisham’s first bestseller, The Firm, sold more than seven million copies. The book was adapted into a 1993 feature film of the same name, starring Tom Cruise, and a 2012 TV series which continues the story ten years after the events of the film and novel. Seven of his other novels have also been adapted into films:
Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.
When he’s not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.
John Girsham lives on a farm in central Virginia.
II. Reviewer: The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
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1. RYAN YOUNG reviews for The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
An important book with implications far beyond its Mississippi setting.
Disclosure: Balko was briefly a colleague about 15 years ago.
Mississippi is likely a bit of an outlier regarding its dysfunctional criminal justice system. But the stories Balko and Carrington tell here apply nationwide. The differences from other states are in degree, not in kind. Two of the main themes explored in this book are braggadocio and incompetence, and they go together very closely.
Hayne the medical examiner and West the bite-mark both exude confidence and are quick to exaggerate, as well a falsify their credentials. But sloppiness, poor standards, ethical violations, personal enrichment schemes, and general incompetence mar their work and have put numerous innocent people in jail–some on death row. Often in error but never in doubt, Hayne and West repeatedly double down on their mistakes, rather than admit to them when caught. They even tampered with evidence. Hayne, on video, once created bite marks on a dead child’s body that eventually put an innocent man in jail for murder.
Their eventual fall from grace was a long time coming, due to a number of factors ranging from lingering racism to institutional inertia and public indifference. Many of the injustices Hayne and West committed will never be put right, and far more people are at fault for that than just them.
If there is a silver lining, Balko and Carrington are at least able to tell the stories of some people whose stories have better, if still unhappy, endings, such as Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. Carrington’s group, the Innocence Project, is devoted to making more such stories come true.
Balko and Carrington also give a fascinating tour of the history of forensics and criminal investigation. They ably explain what techniques are junk science and which are useful, and how easily technical jargon and a smooth, confident demeanor can sway a jury. They also give the historical context for why Mississippi’s criminal justice system is in such bad shape. Most people today, if they weren’t alive during Jim Crow, have parents or grandparents who were. Racism might be less severe than it once was, but is still very much alive, especially in the deep south. Cultural change is just as important for criminal justice reform as any suite of policy or personnel changes. Sadly, the process will likely take generations. Such wounds take more than a lifetime to heal.
Fortunately, Balko and Carrington are doing as much as anyone to help right those wrongs, in Mississippi and across the country. They could use some company, hopefully this book will gain them some. It is a call to action just as much as it is a good read.
2. JOHN D.COFIELD reviews for The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
In the early 1990s in a remote section of rural Mississippi two young girls were abducted from their homes while sleeping, molested, and then murdered. Local law enforcement quickly identified two men as the likely culprits, and they were arrested, put on trial, found guilty, and sentenced. Playing a major role in the prosecutions were two doctors, one an unofficial “medical examiner” who performed the autopsies, the other a dentist who had developed a reputation for being adept at the emerging “science” of bite mark analysis. When the trials were over with the two men packed off to the penitentiary the affair seemed over and done with. There was just one major problem: the men were innocent, the actual murderer remained at large, and the two doctors were, with the connivance of Mississippi’s coroner system and much of its legal establishment, essentially running a scam. Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington’s history of the partnership of Drs Steven Hayne and Michael West and its impact on justice in Mississippi in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is appalling and riveting reading.
The real heart of Balko and Carrington’s tale is the story of justice as it exists (barely) in Mississippi. The state’s all prevailing “good ol’ boy” system makes legalized corruption possible, while public inertia and disdain for minorities means little if anything ever seems to change. When some brave officials and politicians attempt reforms they are stymied and eventually forced out of office. The only thing that seems to make a difference (some of the time), is publicity.
Balko and Carrington build on earlier publicity from within Mississippi and from without to chronicle Hayne and West’s careers, as well as those of the coroners, district attorneys, judges, and others who relied on their findings even as it became obvious that their work was haphazard and lacking in scientific validity. While the stories of the two wrongfully convicted men has a (somewhat) happy ending as they were both eventually exonerated and released after years in prison, Balko and Carrington provide too many other stories of others who were most likely also imprisoned for crimes they never committed for there to be an overall optimistic conclusion.
While Mississippi is an especially egregious example of justice disserved, it is by no means the only one. Balko and Carrington’s work should be an alarm bell warning everyone of the need for greater public awareness of our flawed legal system.
3. JULIE reviews for The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington is a 2018 Public Affairs publication.
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it”- Flannery O’Connor
This book is shocking me, yet, it doesn’t shock me. I know our system has its flaws, that each state has their own peculiar laws and that corruption reigns supreme everywhere. I’ve been reading about the wrongfully convicted since the early eighties when I picked up a book entitled “A Death in Canaan”, which chronicles the incredible story of Peter Reilly who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his mother. Since that time, I’ve followed other cases, such as Timothy Masters, who was convicted based on a fantasy drawing he sketched as a teenager, and the notorious case of the West Memphis Three. Now, Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” has catapulted wrongful convictions in the national spotlight turning such stories into a craze.
“Just as a cockroach scurrying across a kitchen floor at night invariably proves the presence of thousands unseen, these cases leave little room for doubt that innocent men, at unknown and terrible moments in our history, have gone unexonerated and been sent baselessly to their deaths”
Unfortunately, these situations are entirely too common- almost reaching epidemic proportions and often do not get the press like the aforementioned cases garnered. This book highlights a shocking amount in wrongful convictions in the state of Mississippi. While we generally hear the details once a long overdue exoneration occurs, such as when DNA evidence coming to light, we rarely get the full picture, and if you aren’t a resident of Mississippi, or a fan of true crime programming where this case might pop up on your radar, you probably never even heard of these cases, much less the incredible circumstances that sent two innocent men to prison for decades.
I strongly urge you to read this eye opening, incredulous saga which exposed Steven Hayne, a prolific performer of autopsies- the amount of which is mind-boggling, and his partner in crime-Michael West- a dentist who claimed to be an expert in bite mark forensics. However, the question really is- How did these two men manage to get away with their treachery for so long?
The criminal justice system in Mississippi will leave you slack jawed. What’s worse, it that no one with the ability to expose the cracks, or plug the holes, seems to care. It’s like they prefer it this way. It’s appalling!
The book focuses primarily on the cases of Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, who were each wrongfully convicted of murdering three- year old girls, in separate cases. Both Hayne and West helped put the men behind bars, tag teaming at the trial by testifying about the discovery of a bite mark found after the body was submerged in water for over twenty-four hours, in one case. !!! Really? Yep. The judge allowed it and jury believed it.
Readers are also given a lesson on what is viable DNA and forensic evidence. This was a real eye-opener for me- and I even felt a little abashed after reading the margin of error in ‘pattern matching’ forensics.
A judge, remember, allowed this evidence in at trial, and while there some insinuation that the jurors should have balked at the testimony of West and Hayne, I’m afraid most of us would have believed the ‘expert witnesses’, especially after having been exposed to this type of information on numerous crime shows and in plenty of crime fiction, which is passed off as fact, with zero margin for errors, when in truth they are subjective. Most people naively believe in the justice system, and as such, gave these men the benefit of the doubt- especially since they probably didn’t know how much they were being paid for their testimony.
“Recent investigations, exonerations, and studies have also revealed scientific shortcomings in ballistics comparison, tire tread analysis, shoe print analysis, handwriting analysis, and even fingerprint matching. Shaken Baby Syndrome has come under scrutiny. Drug field test kits have been shown to have scandalously high rates of false positives, as have drug-sniffing dogs and dogs used to identify suspects based on scents taken from clothes or from the air.”
This book is quite informative, but if you suffer from high blood pressure, you may want to digest it in small doses because it is absolutely infuriating. It is also a good idea to read it in increments due to the subject matter, and the volume of information one must digest. I found my eyes crossing on a few occasions, as the book did grow tedious in spots and wasn’t always he most exciting material,since it was very fact driven, and not written in the ‘true crime novel”, format, so it could be pretty dry reading. I don’t know if there was a way to jazz up the presentation, really, but it did seem to drag on at times. I read other books in between, and found it very easy to pick up where I left off, but it did take a while to get through it.
That being said, I can not even begin to imagine spending eighteen years of my life in prison for a crime I did not commit- or being sent to death row!! My stomach was in knots thinking about the flaws in forensics, the corruption, outright lies, bribes, and of course the enormous role poverty and race plays in getting a proper defense. Thank goodness for The Innocence Project and for books like this one that will perhaps educate the public so that we will exercise our critical thinking skills more often, especially if you ever find yourself serving on a jury. This book will certainly give readers a great deal to think about, and maybe even send a few shivers down your spine. The very idea that there are more people out there like Hayne and West should give you more than a few restless nights.
4. LARRY reviews for The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
This Will Change How You Think About Forensics
Following on a decades-long career of deep investigative reporting, wherein he discovers wrongdoing, malfeasance, and ineptitude in the American system of criminal justice, gumshoe reporter Radley Balko joins decorated professor of law Tucker Carrington for this shocking exposé. This will change how you think about the practice of not only forensic medicine and the weight we give to supposedly unbiased physical evidence when weighing guilt or innocence, it will change how you think about the system as a whole. If you’re an average person without much experience with American criminal justice, it may even change how you think about how we do things as a country.
This is one case, but it illustrates a pattern of corruption and recklessness in criminal proceedings that can be found, as Balko has demonstrated over hundreds of published articles, virtually anywhere one cares to cast the piercing eye of patient, objective journalism. If you want to know more about it, you should read the review published here by Keith A. Comess, it’s quite thorough. For me, the book was a repeatedly jaw-dropping case study in what corrupted people in trusted positions of power can get away with in our system that affords them every advantage. It shows how vulnerable we all are to the injurious, and as in this case, often racist and sexist whims of those wielding influence over our courts using the mere pretense of science.
If you only have time for one book on the state of justice in America, this one is your best investment.
5. VAL reviews for The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
This was a sad and tragic retelling of the story about a pair of so-called doctors in Mississippi who got involved in the court system as professional testifiers. The first one is the prolific Dr. Steven Hayne. He had lined himself up to be in a position to be doing an incredible 80% of the state’s autopsies when he already had 2 full-time jobs to do. Plus lab work, testifying, private autopsies, and other duties. Not to mention that when the recommended number of per year is 350 to keep from overdoing and making errors, Hayne was doing 1200 to 1800 a year, mostly at night, so he can keep pace with his other jobs and obligations during the day. Needless to say, he can’t be doing all of it well or correctly. There are often reports of cases where he claimed to have removed and weighed organs from bodies, which when exhumed years later turned out to be fully intact. Or in other cases, one or more organs had been surgically removed years before the autopsy. Troubling indeed.
For help with such a huge workload, he often brings in his helper, Dr. Michael West, a country dentist who also has an interest in forensics and bite marks in particular and has styled himself as a specialist in the field and advertises himself as a hired gun to prosecutors. Together they package themselves and promote their various “skills” to various police agencies and area prosecutors as being available to help with difficult cases to make them more solvable. The problems lie in how they accomplished this.
Then comes a couple of murder cases, Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, two black men both convicted in different cases of brutally raping and killing young girls. Dr. Hayne’s autopsy information and Dr. West’s bite mark testimony was involved in convicting both of these young men… wrongfully convicting them. By the time they were able to get help from The Innocence Project, they had long been in prison many years. but were finally able to be exonerated. It was finally proven that another man had killed the girls. But still, Dr. Hayne was used as a coroner for a long time. It took some time but Dr. West fell out of favor. It seemed Dr. Hayne never might but he finally did too. I was provided a copy by NetGalley, Radley Balko, and Perseus Books for my honest review.
6. JOEY R reviews for The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
“The Cadaver King and The Country Dentist” is a very well researched look inside the world of forensic pathology and bite mark analysis within the criminal justice system of Mississippi. The book focuses on forensic pathologist Steven Hayne and bite mark examiner Michael West who provided highly suspect testimony for years that led to the conviction of multiple innocent people in Mississippi. The authors’ focus is on two cases in which the two experts’ testimony led to the conviction of 2 innocent men who spent years in prison on what was obviously junk science. The book also tears apart all of the so-called safeguards such as the prosecutors,judges, and the entire appellate process for letting these two perform forensic analysis and testifying unabated for many years without ever being seriously questioned.
The book is great when it focuses on the cases in which these experts stretched their testimony to tailor it to the needs of the prosecutors in order to help them obtain convictions — sometimes against innocent people. The book fails when the authors try to indict the entire criminal justice system and most of the forensic fields for being unreliable instead of keeping the focus on the politics involved in Mississippi which allowed Hayne and West to become rich men on the back of innocent defendants. Overall, I strongly recommend this book as it gives the reader great insight into how politics and money prevented Mississippi from joining the modern forensic age and allowed con-men to thrive legally within their criminal justice system.
7. DAN reviews for The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
Page-turning, gut-wrenching, eye-opening expose
The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist is by turns engaging, depressing, exciting, and enraging—and a monumental work of investigative storytelling about how junk science polluted justice for a generation in one state.
In the hands of lesser writers, this would have simply been a story of good and evil, of heroes and villains. But Balko and Carrington paint a much more nuanced picture, an almost Southern gothic tale. While the titular physician and dentist are exposed for the quacks and frauds they are, the system in which they operated isn’t cast as a simple morality tale. Path dependency in the common law (the coroner being an office that traces back to medieval England), the ghosts of the Civil War and Jim Crow, well-intended US Supreme Court decisions, and political factionalism combine to set the stage for a generation-long fraud on the people of Mississippi. Most of all, Balko and Carrington highlight the terrible incentives facing everyone in the state’s death investigation and criminal justice system, telling stories of justice gone horribly wrong.
Balko and Carrington have penned a gripping page-turner of an expose that shows both the best and the worst of mankind, and the power of institutions to look past and even condone the morally indefensible. “The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist” is a cry for reform, not just in Mississippi, but in courts and capitols across the country.
8. SANDI reviews for The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
This book is really hard for me to review. I have been mad at books before, have had a book that actually gave me nightmares, and have had books that gave me doubt – but this particular one scared the hell out me. It points out that we are not always in control of our lives. Not in a sci-fi way, this book is a non-fiction book – but in the way that our families, our freedoms and our futures can be taken away – at the drop of a hat – for absolutely no fault of our own, whatsoever.
This book is based on the state death investigation system in the state of Mississippi. It screams of the corrupt, unapologetic, egotistical, racist, lying judicial system – starting with police, mayors, prosecutors, judges, attorney generals, coroners – and right on up the line. There has not been a lot of change down there since the early 1900’s. Except that it has gotten worse as far as bad officials go. Innocent men, some with good alibis, have sat on death row for years for crimes they did not commit and some of them cannot get a judge to even let them test the DNA from these crimes.
Two men were responsible for over 24 years of bad forensics, bad judgment and fabricating evidence and testimony in Mississippi to collaborate with prosecutors who had already determined that a person was guilty. One was medical examiner Steven Haynes. He claimed to do over 300 autopsies a month – which is the standard amount a coroner is scheduled to do in a full year – he gave expert testimony in murder trials twisting the evidence to coincide with what the prosecutors wanted, he testified to being a ‘certified’ pathologist, when he had walked out of that testing and ended up buying his certification from a diploma mill. Most of this information was known by the Attorney General, judges, prosecutors and the police force and it was in their best interest to ignore it. Haynes side kick was a small time dentist, Michael West. He touted a number of new and none proven scientific forensics as gospel, such as being able to see bite marks on people or corpses, often weeks after their death, by using ultra violet lights. He would then build a mold and continually press that mold into where he said the bite mark was, until there was an imprint. Hence, conviction. Both these men had medical examiners and forensic specialists testify against them as to their findings and methods being totally wrong, when the arrested person could afford that extra specialist, which was next to impossible. The courts most often ignored that testimony and went with whatever Haynes and West testified. Even when they could not produce any evidence – boldly saying that the evidence had been thrown away and the court should “just take my word for it”. Their twisted and or false evidence corroborated what the prosecutor wanted. Mississippi courts still do not assign a public defender, to this day. And if the accused can afford to hire one, they are so logged down with cases that often their help is next to worthless.
For 24 years these two men helped to imprison innocent people until in 2008 Haynes was ousted by Steve Simpson of the Department of Public Safety. He had his Mississippi state autopsy rights taken away from him and additional rules were implemented to keep non-certified persons from performing autopsies and giving expert testimony in court. This took about $2 million a year away from Haynes. He had many, many people stand up for him, in addition to the Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. In 2010 a bill to legitimize doctors performing autopsies was introduced to the Mississippi legislature. Both West and Haynes lobbied against that bill. It finally passed. In 2012 West gave up his dental practice and started denouncing the bite mark evidence as being credible, the very evidence he had used for years to convict so many people.
Then it was proven that two men on death row were innocent – Kenny Brewer and Levon Brooks, both accused of the rape and murder of two small children in separate incidences. Together they spent 30 years in prison before being exonerated in 2008. Both men convicted due to evidence by Haynes and West – trying to fit the evidence to what the prosecutors wanted, while the man guilty of both the crimes, Justin Johnson, went free, until finally after 30 years he confessed. Jim Hood, Mississippi’s Attorney General has since moved to prevent the reassessment of all the convictions that were determined on the evidence that West and Haynes fabricated, even knowing that there had been errors made, forensics used that were proven wrong, many people in prison, many people on death row for crimes they did not commit. And to make matters worse after all their appeals, a prisoners final appeal to the federal courts have usually been denied due to the overly strict set of guidelines that the convicted must adhere to. Many appeals have been denied on time frame. The Mississippi Supreme Court made sure of that by imposing rules that are next to unattainable. With DNA now advanced and able to collaborate guilt or innocence the courts have denied even the request to have that DNA tested, stating a one year time limit has been exceeded.
A retired former chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court is quoted as saying, “Looking back I can’t believe I bought into all of that…” “Experience eventually taught me that it really begins with the DA. Once the DA decided he was going to seek the death penalty, it was really all downhill from there.” ” I wish I had been more courageous”, said retired Supreme Court chief justice Edwin Pittman, “A couple of those old cases embarrass me now. We should have been less accepting of Haynes and that culture.” Pittman’s tenure began as Hayne and West’s were just beginning and lasted through most of their careers. He reviewed 46 of Haynes cases and did not throw out any for bad forensics or tainted testimony. He says now he wises he had been more skeptical. “There could be a herd mentality on the court – there was always a strong majority of justices that were just always accepting of the prosecutors and expert testimony.”
It appears that Mississippi, among other states, does not care about justice or innocence. They only care about upholding the process they used to incarcerate and condemn a person to death. Lives are not even worth the cost of testing a DNA kit.
9. SIRIA reviews for The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
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 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.
10. MARK reviews for The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
“A study of Mississippi death investigations from 1981 through 1984 showed staggeringly high rates of deaths classified as “undetermined causes.” In DeSoto County, for example, the rate was 53 percent. In Benton County, it was 70 percent. The average across the country is around 3 percent.”
“The Mississippi system was run by the triumvirate for years,” says one long-serving former coroner. “Imagine that. A pathologist, a small-town dentist, and a funeral director.… The state provided an audience of adoring idiots.”
This is a very disturbing look, at the justice system in the south, zeroing in on Mississippi. It is a jaw-dropping read and I kept hoping that this was just fiction and not this jarring reality check. It is also recent history, which makes it even more terrifying. The authors do a fantastic job here, bringing this untold story, from the shadows, to the light. 4.5 stars
III. The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist Quotes
The best book quotes from The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by John Grisham
“A study of Mississippi death investigations from 1981 through 1984 showed staggeringly high rates of deaths classified as “undetermined causes.” In DeSoto County, for example, the rate was 53 percent. In Benton County, it was 70 percent. The average across the country is around 3 percent.”
“The core problem with the medicolegal system in Mississippi is that it’s easily manipulated—it serves those in power. Historically, it has served as a means of preserving the state’s white power structure. But that’s only because those in power wanted it that way.”
“This is simply false. It’s either a lie or a false statement arising from stunning inattention to the facts.”
“We couldn’t even count the bullet holes in my brother’s head. But they called it heart failure. —A black Mississippi woman, 1964”
“By the early 1990s, Hayne, West, and Jimmy Roberts would come to dominate Mississippi’s medicolegal system. “The Mississippi system was run by the triumvirate for years,” says one long-serving former coroner. “Imagine that. A pathologist, a small-town dentist, and a funeral director.… The state provided an audience of adoring idiots.”
Excerpted from The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by John Grisham
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