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

Author:Radley Balko
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: true crime, legal studies
ISBN: 9781610396912
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2018-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

Without oversight from the state medical examiner’s office, Steven Hayne was flourishing. By the late 1990s his annual autopsy totals topped 1,500, which meant he was grossing three-quarters of a million dollars per year from county autopsy fees alone. But Hayne was also looking to do more private autopsies, where he often charged $1,500 or more per procedure, plus significantly more per hour for testimony and trial preparation than he got from the state. Around 1995, Hayne joined Investigative Research Inc. (IR) to help facilitate his work in private cases. Initially, IR was a small operation whose main clients were insurance companies that hired it to conduct arson investigations. After bringing Hayne aboard, IR expanded to take on investigations for life insurance companies, plus provide expert testimony in civil litigation, often related to medical malpractice and wrongful deaths.

Meanwhile, two years after Emily Ward left, Mississippi still didn’t have a state medical examiner. The coroners and prosecutors who had chased Ward out were fine with that. They both declared victory and pushed to ensure that no one like her occupied the office again.

“All I can say is that Hinds County hasn’t missed a beat without [a state medical examiner],” coroner Robert Martin told the Clarion-Ledger. Jimmy Roberts agreed: “It seems to me things run smoother when we don’t have one.” Washington County coroner George Hampton told the paper that when he had a question about the job, he just asked Steven Hayne. “Anytime I have a question, I always call him, and he is able to respond whenever I need him.” Karl Oliver, the president of the coroners’ association, agreed. “The system is working absolutely fine,” he said.

Michael West had done such a convincing job with his public advocacy that his hometown paper, the Hattiesburg American, recommended abolishing the state medical examiner entirely. A staff editorial opined, “A competent coroner and pathologist working at the local level are more than qualified to conduct death investigations and render accurate opinions.… Mississippi can do without a state medical examiner. As far as we’re concerned—pardon the pun—this is a dead issue.” For good measure, the editorial also quoted West: “In my 16 years in this field, I’ve never seen one instance where a state medical examiner was needed. Not one.”

For their part, state officials weren’t going out of their way to find Ward’s replacement. The position was advertised with a salary of $69,000, which would have made whoever took the job the lowest paid state medical examiner in the country. One needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to wonder if the Mississippi offer wasn’t intended to prevent qualified candidates from applying.

It seems clear that most powerful people in the state’s criminal justice system wanted the office to remain vacant. Legislators didn’t feel particularly obligated to offer more, because no one who had their ear was really complaining. From the legislature’s point of view, the state was saving money by not funding the salary and benefits of a state medical examiner and a full office of support staff.

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