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

By Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington

Book Overview

"A haunting true crime tale of systemic incompetence and racism" (New York Times) - 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 161039691X
• ISBN13: 9781610396912
• Release Date: February 2018
• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

It would have been better. ..

This book was purchased because it was under my favorite author John Grisham at that time. The authors try much too hard to convince the reader that the story is factual. It would have been a decent read had they just let us read it, and stop writing about why you should believe them.