Autopsy Games

JOHN GRISHAM

The first recorded autopsy of note was that of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. The Roman emperor seriously underestimated the loyalty of his colleagues, and when he brazenly declared himself to be Emperor for Life, they took offense. They also took up knives and attacked him on the Senate Floor. A mob of about sixty flailed away at Caesar, who, in addition to being shocked, was also defenseless. They left him a bloody mess, fled the scene, and, typical for politicians, immediately began denying they were involved or blaming other people.

For reasons that were never clear, someone with authority requested an autopsy, though it was evident what had happened. Autopsies were nothing new; the Greeks had been dissecting corpses for five hundred years.

As a crowd looked on, a distinguished physician, Antistius, went about the gruesome task and soon confirmed the obvious: Caesar died from a massive loss of blood. There were twenty-three stab wounds.

In the 1500s, Leonardo da Vinci, in his never-ending thirst for knowledge, collected cadavers and dissected at least thirty of them, not to solve crimes or study diseases, but to understand and illustrate every part of the human body. His rival, Michelangelo, occasionally put down his chisels and brushes, picked up the scalpel, and conducted his own research.

By the Middle Ages, autopsies were common in Europe and Asia, but they were seldom used in criminal investigations. In the 1800s, as the United States' population soared almost as fast as its murder rate, autopsies became useful tools for criminal investigators. In almost every murder, the best source of evidence is the body. Pathologists in America gained expertise in sifting for clues through the remains of the victims.

Founded in 1936, the American Board of Pathology (ABP) made the first serious effort to regulate the practice by promulgating standard requirements for certification. The field continued to grow, as did the crime rate, and by 1940 it was well accepted in American criminal procedure that the doctor who performed the autopsy had to be "board certified" by the ABP before he or she could testify. As the need grew, forensic pathologists became more involved in solving crimes and the science was modernized. More regulations followed. With time, the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) began regulating the certification of pathologists.

NAME also handled complaints against its members, and, as in all fields of medicine, there was never a shortage of bad actors. In 1992, an infamous Texas pathologist named Ralph Erdmann attracted national attention because of the large number of autopsies he claimed to have performed. He worked in rural Texas and handled the work for about forty counties that could not afford to hire their own medical examiners—and Erdmann was eager to help. He even made house calls, driving to the counties and performing wherever necessary. Most of the counties lacked proper facilities, so Erdmann adapted on the fly. He dissected corpses in parking lots, garages, and alleys. He became a darling of the police and prosecutors because he could massage his testimony to support their theories of guilt. He fancied himself the "Quincy of the Texas Panhandle," after the TV character made popular by Jack Klugman. Eventually, his shoddy work caught up with him, as did the complaints from defense lawyers. When Erdmann was finally investigated, it was determined that in at least one-third of his autopsies he had never opened the corpse.

He averaged 300 autopsies a year and claimed to have peaked at 480, an astonishing number.

NAME recommended that a medical examiner do no more than 250 per year. If a doctor exceeded 325, NAME would not certify the lab where he worked.

Given that a typical autopsy takes between two and four hours, followed by the preparation of a report and other paperwork, Erdmann's numbers were extraordinary.

Such numbers, though, were a drop in the bucket for a pathologist who roamed the state of Mississippi in the 1990s. Nicknamed "The Cadaver King," he cornered the market on autopsies and handled 80 percent of the state's homicides during his reign. He once boasted of doing 1,000 autopsies a year. Even 1,500, or more.

At his peak, he claimed to have performed 2,000 autopsies in one year.

—

His name was Dr. Steven Hayne.

He was born in Los Angeles in 1941, finished medical school at Brown University in 1976, and specialized in pathology. He worked for various hospitals around the country for a few years before taking a job as the medical director of a laboratory in Rankin County, Mississippi, in 1985. As a sideline, he began doing autopsies for $400 each.

His timing could not have been better. Because of the low pay and other issues, Mississippi couldn't keep a permanent state medical examiner. If a county coroner suspected foul play in a death, it was his duty to arrange an autopsy. There was no central state morgue or lab to ship the body to, no state agency or clearinghouse to monitor and regulate autopsies. The county coroners, all eighty-two of them, had to call a pathologist and beg for an autopsy. Since virtually all pathologists loathed the work, and the small fees, not to mention the unpleasant prospect of testifying in court, there was a perpetual backlog of corpses in need of examination.

Enter Dr. Hayne. He sniffed out an opportunity and let it be known that he was open for business. To him the math was simple: Good money could be made with an assembly-line approach. He began by doing several autopsies a month, quickly, efficiently, and with the friendly service attitude of a car salesman. Before long he was doing one per day, and just getting started. By word of mouth he advertised his services, and the coroners, police, sheriffs, and prosecutors gladly shipped their corpses to him. He also advertised in police bulletins and newsletters. In 1988 he did 320 autopsies. By 1990, he was doing 1,200 a year.

Not only was Dr. Hayne an incredible workhorse, he was also a marvelous witness for the prosecution. Affable, glib, and smart, he wowed juries for years with an effective combination of folksiness and sharp medical knowledge. He used big words and small ones, and he spoke in a clear voice with no accent. He didn't sound like people from Mississippi. He was from California, and Brown University, and other faraway places. Lawyers have known for years that the farther an expert travels to get to the courtroom, the more impressed the local folks will be. With constant practice, Hayne played the role perfectly.

When he wasn't at the autopsy table or in a courtroom, he worked as the director of the Rankin Medical Center lab and directed a kidney care center. On top of that, he consulted in civil cases and performed private autopsies.

When later questioned about his superhuman workload, he explained: "I normally sleep no more than two or three hours a day. I also work seven days a week, not five. I don't take vacations. So I work at a much more efficient level and much harder than most people. I'm blessed with that and cursed with that, but that's what I carry with me, and I work very, very hard. I have an ability to work long hours and I don't make a lot of errors. I think my record speaks for itself."

—

But there were errors, and plenty of them.

As Hayne cornered the market on autopsies, dead bodies arrived at his small morgue at an astonishing rate. It was not unusual for six or seven to be waiting for the knife, and they were often stacked up like cordwood on the holding ramp. One state official who saw the operation said, "It looked like an autopsy factory. There were no safety precautions." A former state official said, "Hayne was constantly looking for ways to cut corners. Evidence was frequently improperly labeled. Evidence was tainted because it was improperly packaged and preserved. They didn't take safety precautions with chemicals or biological materials." One police officer described the morgue as a "sausage factory." A police chief described seeing five corpses lying side by side, all cut open, in various stages of being examined. He worried about cross-contamination. One state official questioned whether Hayne was doing all the work himself. He said, "I've always found it impossible to believe that Steve did all the autopsies he claimed to have done. He was never in the prime of health. He could not have stood up to the regimen he claimed to have followed."

Whether he actually did the autopsies or not, Dr. Hayne was certainly sending bills for them. Before long he had increased his rate to $1,000 per autopsy, plus $350 an hour to testify in court. He was taking bodies from all over the state and had become its de facto medical examiner. Since he billed each county separately, and since there was no centralized recordkeeping, no one but Hayne knew how many autopsies he was actually doing or how much money he was making. The math, though, was fairly straightforward. He was grossing over a million dollars a year as an uncertified forensic pathologist.

His apologists considered him a real asset to the State. He was doing work few other doctors would. Prosecutors loved him because he was great in court, could convince a jury, and was creative in finding evidence that supported the State's theory of guilt.

To this day, no one knows how many wrongful convictions began with a scalpel in the hands of Dr. Steven Hayne.

—

One of the first began on September 15, 1990, with the abduction and murder of a three-year-old girl named Courtney Smith.

She lived with her mother, grandmother, two sisters, and four uncles in a blue clapboard cottage on an unpaved road on "the other side of the tracks" in the small, dying town of Brooksville, Mississippi. The neighborhood was a grid of gravel roads running between shotgun houses, all built long before 1990. Some were well maintained with fresh paint, flower boxes, and grass lawns. Most were in a perpetual state of disrepair. A few had been abandoned. On some of the lots multiple dwellings had been erected and several generations of a family lived clustered together. Mobile homes were scattered about haphazardly. Though the neighborhood was poor, there was little serious crime. Many of the residents slept with their doors and windows unlocked, if there were locks at all.

On that Saturday evening, Courtney and her sister Ashley, age five, had dinner with their grandmother and great-grandmother, then walked home, a few minutes away. It was still summertime, hot and humid, and the neighbors were outdoors, porch-sitting, cooking on the grill, and playing in the streets. At home, their mother, Sonya Smith, bathed the girls and prepared them for bed. She dressed Courtney in a T-shirt with a duck on the front and the word Mississippi across the top. When the girls were asleep, Sonya got dressed herself and went out for the night. It was, after all, Saturday, and she enjoyed the bar scene in the local honky-tonks. Her mother, Ruby, said she would babysit the girls. Also in the house was Tony, Sonya's brother, one of the girls' three uncles who lived with them.

Ruby, the grandmother, got bored and left with some friends. Uncle Tony was fast asleep on the sofa. The girls were asleep in the bedroom. There was nothing unusual about the tag-team approach to the babysitting. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and neighbors all pitched in to help with the kids.

Around midnight, a man from the area entered the house through the unlocked front door and walked past the sofa where Tony was asleep. He looked into the first bedroom, saw two little girls sleeping, picked up Courtney without waking her, and walked out. He took her down a short path and away from the houses. Near a pond, he laid her on the ground, uncertain what to do next. When he penetrated her vagina with a finger, she finally woke up and began crying. When she wouldn't stop, he choked her and then tossed her into the pond. She couldn't swim and struggled to stay afloat. When her little head dipped underwater for the last time, the killer walked back to his car and drove away.

Sonya Smith spent Sunday morning looking for her daughter, assuming she was with another family. Initially, there was no panic because children were known to stay with whoever happened to be keeping them. By late afternoon, though, it was apparent Courtney was indeed missing. The police were called around 8:00 p.m. , and by then hundreds of people were searching for the girl.

On Monday morning, the town's police chief saw the partially submerged body of a child in the pond. He pulled it out and laid it beside the water. The child, a little girl, was wearing a duck T-shirt with the word Mississippi across the top. She had bled from wounds to the groin and head. The chief wrapped the body in another officer's jacket and waited for the sheriff's office.

The first to arrive was Deputy Ernest Eichelberger, who, in spite of his uncommon last name, was a burly African American who had been in law enforcement for only five years. As the deputy chief, he assumed the role of lead investigator. He knew a child was missing and found Courtney's father, who made a positive ID.

Eichelberger then turned the body over to the county coroner, who immediately sent it to Dr. Steven Hayne for an autopsy. He completed it that night and determined that the child had been choked but most likely died by drowning. She had been sexually assaulted, but he found no pubic hair or semen and concluded the killer had not forced intercourse. He found some bruises on her right wrist that he thought might have been caused by human teeth, but wasn't certain. He ran some more tests and decided the bruises were made around the time of death. Some other marks may have been animal bites.

With the human bite mark theory in play, Dr. Hayne and the investigators were in luck. At that time, Mississippi was home to one of the country's leading bite mark experts, the phenomenal Dr. Michael West.

As a small-town dentist in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Dr. West had somehow become an expert witness and had launched himself onto center stage in some of the most sensational trials in the state. Almost overnight, Dr. West became a forensic expert not only with bite marks, but with ballistics, gunshot reconstruction, wound patterns, bruises, tool mark patterns, arson, glass breakage, and fingernail scratches. In almost every case, his sidekick, Dr. Hayne, performed the autopsy, then called in West to nail down the proof.

When Dr. Hayne finished Courtney's autopsy, he called Dr. West and asked him to come to the morgue as soon as possible. They had another murder on their hands and the killer, for some reason, had chosen to bite his victim.

Dr. West did not arrive in time. Late Monday night, the mortician who owned the morgue decided to proceed with the embalming without notifying anyone.

The following morning, Dr. West examined the freshly embalmed body, and quickly agreed with his pal that the bite marks on the wrist were from human teeth. He excised some skin around the wounds, studied their marks, and wrote a short report. He billed the county almost $3,000 for his labors and informed the coroner that he was ready to provide further assistance as soon as the sheriff had a suspect.

—

Suspects were plentiful. Deputy Eichelberger's method of investigation was to arrest all of them, throw them in jail, and wait for the truth to come out. The first was Courtney's great-uncle by marriage, a man named Mickens, who was known to drink too much and when drinking often touched women inappropriately. To Eichelberger, that was enough proof that Mickens was somehow involved in the rape and murder of a child. When the suspect appeared on the evening news, handcuffed and bewildered, a reporter breathlessly covered the heinous details of the crime, which now included not only a murder, but a violent rape, a head wound, and a cut on the mouth.

Eichelberger then arrested Courtney's uncles: Tony, Ernest, and William Smith, all on suspicion of murder but without a shred of evidence against them. Uncle Tony had been fast asleep on the sofa when the killer entered the house and left with Courtney. The three men had just lost a niece, one they loved, protected, and shared a home with. Now they were accused of killing her and were sitting in jail.

Eichelberger was just getting started. He arrested William McCarthy and David Harrison, two men with nothing to do with the crime, but since they were friends of Ruby's, the grandmother, and in the neighborhood that night, they were suspicious enough to be charged and jailed.

He arrested John Hodge, Sonya Smith's boyfriend; Robert Goodwin, a neighbor; and Lee Harris, a friend of Uncle Tony's.

With his tenth arrest, Eichelberger finally got lucky, though he didn't realize it. He stumbled upon the murderer and arrested him. He was Justin Johnson, a thirty-five-year-old local with a reputation of strange behavior, keeping to himself, and getting arrested. More than once, he was accused of breaking into homes late at night and either attacking or threatening women. The cops picked up his trail because several neighbors reported seeing his blue and white 1978 Buick Electra parked near the pond around midnight. His alibi was lame. At the jail, Eichelberger asked him if he had been arrested before and he replied, "Yes, for a similar deal, attempted rape. Not long ago."

An experienced detective, or perhaps even a low-level beat cop, would have concentrated on Johnson, but Eichelberger was distracted by yet another promising suspect: Levon Brooks.

Johnson was eventually released. Eighteen years would pass before another detective questioned him about the murder of Courtney Smith.

—

Levon Brooks became the prime suspect because he occasionally wore an earring. He lived in Macon, a nearby town, and didn't hang around Brooksville. He knew the Smith family well because he and Sonya had dated a few times years earlier and they were still friendly. Levon was friendly with almost everyone. He loved the nightlife, the clubs, the ladies, and he was especially fond of fancy clothes and the latest fashions. The gold earring was something new and added to his reputation as a man ahead of his time. He enjoyed his job at the Santa Barbara, a nightclub not far from his home. He earned good money there, worked decent hours, and met a lot of women. Levon was thirty-two years old, a bachelor, nice-looking, and always played the field. He managed to stay friendly with all his ex-girlfriends.

On the Saturday night Courtney Smith was abducted and murdered, Levon was working at the Santa Barbara, eight miles away from her home in Brooksville. Numerous alibi witnesses would swear on the witness stand that he was there mixing drinks, cooking in the kitchen, watching the dance floor, and, as always, flirting with the ladies.

However, such clear proof would be no match for the bogus scientific testimony cooked up by Drs. Hayne and West and presented to the jury.

The earring theory began its long and tortured journey with the assumption made by the investigators that the only possible witness to Courtney's abduction was her five-year-old sister, Ashley. As the days passed with no clues, a jail full of "suspects," and pressure mounting to solve the crime, the investigators decided to concentrate on Ashley and prod her into remembering something.

Interrogating children, especially those traumatized by violent crime, is a fragile, complicated business that should be handled by qualified forensic professionals with a background in psychiatry. Five days after Courtney's murder, and the day after her funeral, Ashley sat for her first interview. The officer had no background in psychiatry, psychology, or therapy. He was a local cop who had once hosted a kids' show on television; thus he claimed to have a certain talent in dealing with children.

The interview was a disaster and should have made the police realize that Ashley should be left alone. She said things the police knew to be outright fabrications. She said her uncle Tony pulled a knife on the intruders, but later changed it to a gun. Her ramblings were often fantastical and absurd, as when she said the abductor had fled with Courtney in an airplane. In the next interview she tried to identify the abductor or abductors: he was a black man named Shavon; then Travon, who went to college with her mother; Travon then had an accomplice; then he had two, one white, one black; then he was a lone white man named Clay; he had a stocking over his head; then it was a Halloween mask. In another interview, she added more details: the attackers left with Courtney but returned home with potato chips and drinks; one of them taunted her, saying, "Ha, ha, we got your sister"; one also had a bag full of money.

The truth was that Ashley had slept through the entire abduction and didn't realize her sister was missing until she woke up the following morning. From that moment until her first interview five days later she never claimed to have seen the abductor. Only when the police began suggesting details did her vulnerable imagination take over.

Wearing a quarter in one's ear was a fad that came and went in some black communities. When the interviewer asked Ashley about a quarter in the abductor's ear, she took it and ran. Yes, the man did indeed have a quarter in his ear.

The shrewd detectives surmised that perhaps the quarter was really an earring. Levon Brooks was one of very few local black men wearing earrings in 1990.

Finally, the cops had a real suspect. They showed Ashley a series of photos of black men and manipulated the lineup to cast more suspicion on Brooks. She identified him and added that he had blindfolded Courtney with a stocking—two details that were first suggested by the police and not Ashley.

Tenuous as it was, the earring was the only possible evidence linking Brooks to the crime. He had not been in the area at the time of the crime; indeed, he had never been to the current home of Sonya Smith. He had never met Courtney or Ashley. He had no history of sex crimes and had never been accused or suspected of abusing children.

—

Even as the investigation began to focus on Levon Brooks, the investigators were busy elsewhere.

On September 23, Dr. West arrived in town with his tool kit and a sack of plaster. He began with the ten men in jail, none of whom had lawyers, and convinced them to provide dental molds of their teeth. No lawyer worth his salt would allow such a procedure without a warrant or a hearing, but due process and legal protections were of little significance. The "suspects" felt as though they had no choice but to cooperate.

Oddly enough, Dr. West also shoved a tray filled with plaster into the mouth of Sonya Smith, the victim's mother, and made a dental mold from it. No one had even remotely suggested that Sonya was involved in the murder, nor did anyone have a clue as to why she would be suspected of biting her daughter's wrists.

A total of ten "suspects" consented to the dental molds, including the killer, Justin Johnson. The next day, Dr. West informed the authorities that he had completed his examination and all ten had been excluded as the source of the bite marks.

—

With the first batch of suspects cleared, Eichelberger concentrated on Levon Brooks. He arrested him for murder and informed Dr. West that he had a prime suspect. He and another deputy drove Brooks two hours to Hattiesburg, to the West Dental Clinic, where the thirteenth mold was taken.

The next morning, Dr. West called the investigators with the news they were counting on. In his opinion, Levon Brooks was the only person in the world who could have left the bite marks on the victim. He wrote: "The dental structures of one Levon Brooks did indeed and without a doubt inflict the bite marks found on the body of Courtney Smith."

Indeed and without a doubt. This was a brand-new standard in forensic science and courtroom testimony, one obviously created by Dr. West and one he would use repeatedly in years to come. Defense lawyers sometimes, but certainly not always, objected to the near-lethal phrase. Judges—few of whom had any grasp of basic scientific principles, and most with little desire to educate themselves—overruled the objections and let West run with his new standard. Jurors didn't know the difference. On appeal, the Mississippi Supreme Court almost always found a reason to allow it.

Before West, experts at trials were constrained to define their conclusions as within "a reasonable degree" of medical or scientific certainty. West was allowed to blatantly opine that there was no doubt about his findings.

The State then had all it needed to indict Levon Brooks for capital murder: (1) the confused and often sensational meanderings of a traumatized five-year-old sister of the victim; (2) a manipulated photo lineup presented to the same child; (3) a polygraph exam Brooks allegedly flunked; and (4) the unequivocal bite mark opinion of Dr. West.

The trial began on January 13, 1992, some sixteen months after the murder. The prosecution was led by Forrest Allgood, the elected district attorney and a staunch believer in the death penalty. Though it would be the first time Allgood relied on the tag team of Hayne and West, they would join forces many times in the following years. Few if any other prosecutors used them as often.

In his opening statement to the jury, Allgood laid out his case. Since he had no physical evidence other than the bite marks, he relied heavily upon them. Allgood told the jury: "He left his mark in the form of some teeth marks embedded in her arm. The State of Mississippi, ladies and gentlemen, is simply going to prove to you that that man is Levon Brooks."

The State's first witness was Ashley Smith, now seven years old. She was as frightened as any child would have been, and the judge didn't help matters. He quizzed her first and warned her that if she didn't tell the truth, she would "go to the devil."

Scaring the hell out of the child seemed an odd way to begin.

Allgood's questions were concise, easy to understand and follow, and elicited well-rehearsed answers from Ashley. Her prior fantasies, inconsistencies, and conflicting stories vanished. However, on cross-examination, the defense attorney began asking about her initial stories. What about the different men, black and white, who abducted her sister? What about the getaway in an airplane? And Uncle Tony giving chase with a knife, or was it a gun? And bad men who returned to the house with potato chips, or a sack full of money?

As in her initial interviews, she became confused and quickly lost credibility.

None of it mattered to Allgood, because he had what he wanted. During his closing argument four days later, he brazenly told the jury: "From start to finish, the little girl has never identified anybody else as being the man who came into her bedroom and took her sister away except the defendant. Nobody else."

Dr. Hayne testified that Courtney probably died of freshwater drowning but had bruises to her head and cuts on the inside of her vagina. No semen was found. He told the jury that the marks on her wrist were probably made by human teeth, and explained that he had consulted Dr. Michael West, who agreed. Hayne then testified that the bite marks were inflicted at the time of death or shortly thereafter. Thus, the person who bit her was the person who killed her.

Experts who later reviewed the case agreed that the testimony was terribly flawed. It was virtually impossible to determine (1) the origin of bite marks on a body submerged in water as long as Courtney's and (2) whether the marks were made before or after her death.

Other unfounded and sensational facts were introduced. As Hayne was describing the cuts on the victim's vagina, he told the jury they could have been made by a finger or a penis. Out of nowhere, Allgood asked, "What about a broom handle?"

A broom handle?

No one had yet mentioned a broom handle. None had been found at the crime scene. No report mentioned one. There had been no hint of one anywhere in the investigation.

But Allgood pulled one out of thin air and Hayne was quick to agree that, yes, the injuries could have been caused by a broom handle.

The defense objected to the sudden inclusion of such a sensational detail, but the judge allowed it anyway. The jury was left with the horrifying image of Levon Brooks raping the child with a broom handle. Since no semen was found, perhaps he didn't use his penis. Therefore, he had to use something else. Why not a broom handle?

That awful image was solidified when Allgood, in his closing argument, reminded the jury of the totally fictitious broom handle.

Dr. West took the stand on the fourth day of the trial and spent the first thirty minutes convincing the judge and jury that he was one of the country's leading experts in forensic odontology. He described himself as a "senior crime scene analyst" and boasted of an appearance on the Phil Donahue television show. He claimed to have testified as an expert in thirteen states, then clicked off all thirteen to impress everyone. His thick résumé was clear proof of the breadth and depth of his knowledge. It listed dozens of articles he had written and published on bite mark analysis. However, few if any had been peer-reviewed by experts and scientists. West claimed to have close associations with Scotland Yard, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and law enforcement agencies all over the world, including "Israeli intelligence." He ran through a list of the places he had lectured, including China, and ending, as always, with the "FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia."

The defense offered a half-hearted inquiry into his credentials but the judge waved him through. Since Dr. West had been qualified as an expert and allowed to testify in so many other jurisdictions, then certainly he must know his stuff. Surely some other judge back there had taken the time to research his qualifications.

Dr. West was off and running. Allgood began by confronting his biggest problem: The body had been embalmed before West got to it. No problem at all. By the time West finished his explanation, he had convinced the jury that the embalming actually helped preserve the skin and somehow, miraculously, made it easier to match the bite marks to Levon Brooks.

He then wowed the jury with his analysis of Levon's teeth. Using enlarged photographs and plaster molds, he carefully and methodically explained how he made his identification. He used words like fractures, bevels , cutting edges, L-shaped curves, facets, and a scalloped-out area with a sharp edge . He explained the differences in human skin and how it varies on the body. Different teeth leave different indentions on different skin.

Oddly enough, his plaster molds of Levon's teeth were for some reason insufficient. He needed more detail, so just before the trial he visited Brooks in Noxubee County Jail and convinced him to open his mouth. When he did, Dr. West pressed in a wad of Silly Putty—the actual toy. He extracted it, looked it over, and claimed it provided greater detail of Brooks's upper incisors than the plaster molds.

Dr. West explained that the bite marks on Courtney's wrist were tiny, barely noticeable, and could not be seen by the average person. Fortunately, at least for the prosecution, West had an answer. He had developed and pioneered an investigative technique that would save the day. By using a pair of yellow goggles and a certain brand of ultraviolet light, West claimed he could see and find injuries and indentations that were otherwise invisible. He named his procedure the "West Phenomenon." Using it, he could find clues missed by all other investigators.

After describing his work and analysis, and impressing the jury with his expertise, vocabulary, experience, folksiness, and even, at times, humility, West was ready for the knockout punch. He offered the ultimate opinion that the bite marks on Courtney's wrist were "indeed and without a doubt" made by Levon Brooks.

The defense did not object. The judge said nothing.

The State offered no other credible evidence. No one from the crime lab testified because there was no biological evidence linking Brooks to the crime. The jury chose to believe the experts, Hayne and West, over the alibi witnesses who placed Brooks in the nightclub where he was working at the time of the abduction. After five days of testimony and arguments by the lawyers, Levon Brooks was found guilty of capital murder.

Two days later the jury sentenced him to life without parole, and he was taken to the State's infamous prison at Parchman.

—

A few months passed and life returned to normal in Brooksville. With the murderer convicted and put away, folks felt safer and began to relax.

But in early May the killer struck again, and in much the same way. The second murder was so similar to Courtney's that someone in law enforcement should have asked serious questions.

The victim was Christine Jackson, another three-year-old child who lived not far from Courtney Smith. She lived with her mother, Gloria, and some siblings in a dilapidated shack on a gravel road in a remote area of the county. Gloria, not exactly a hands-on mother, was often in trouble with social services because of concerns over the health and welfare of her children. They were often unfed and neglected. Boyfriends came and went, but one, Kennedy Brewer, moved in and tried to help with the bills and kids. He was only nineteen years old and looking for steady employment.

On Saturday night, May 2, 1992, Gloria left the kids with Kennedy and went to the clubs with some friends. Her first, and favorite, was the Santa Barbara, now minus its longtime floor man, Levon Brooks, who was only three months into his life sentence. She returned home around 12:30 and found Kennedy and her three children asleep. She rousted her boyfriend and they had sex in another room, then returned to the bedroom and went to sleep.

Justin Johnson was in the area. He was living with his parents, about a mile away, and decided to take a long walk in the dark, with no destination in mind. Years later, when he confessed to both murders, he said he was following voices that led him to a small shack just off the road. The voices told him to open a broken window, lift it up, reach inside, and gently take a child sleeping on the floor. This he did without disturbing Gloria and Kennedy and without waking Christine or her siblings. He carried her into the woods, and when she awoke he put her down and they walked, hand in hand, deeper into the darkness. They stopped near a creek. The voices returned with a vengeance and told him to "sex molest her, hurt her, and dispose of the body." He undressed and raped her, ejaculated, choked her, and then threw her in the creek. He started crying and jumped in to save her, but she had already been swept downstream. Cold and wet, he sat on the edge of the creek for a long time and cried and listened to the voices in his head. At some point he walked back to his parents' home.

As soon as Gloria realized her daughter was missing on Sunday morning, she began frantically calling friends, neighbors, and family members. When a deputy arrived, at least two dozen people were searching for Christine.

Gloria and Kennedy told the deputy their versions of what had happened the night before. They were certain Christine was asleep at the foot of their bed when they fell asleep. She was gone when they woke up. There were no signs of forced entry, though none of the doors had locks.

The road to a bad conviction often begins at the crime scene with a misguided hunch. The deputy evaluated the situation and decided that since no one broke into the house, it had to be an inside job. The only adults inside the house were Gloria and Kennedy.

Deputy Eichelberger joined the brain trust and quickly agreed with the deputy's gut reaction. From that moment forward, Kennedy Brewer was the prime suspect. There was no hint of a motive. No evidence. No dead body at that point. And no clue as to how he could have eased himself out of bed, taken the child, carried her away, raped her, disposed of her body, then returned to his bed and fallen asleep without disturbing Gloria.

As usually happens, the hunch led to tunnel vision, and the investigators focused on Kennedy. They had their man.

The search continued with no success until a police helicopter spotted the body on Wednesday, four days after the murder. It was still in the creek and evidently had just floated to the surface. The county coroner sent the body to Dr. Hayne for an autopsy.

The police acknowledged the similarities in the two murders but did not believe they could be related. And why not? Their rationale was simple. Levon Brooks could not have killed Christine Jackson because he was incarcerated at Parchman.

As in the Brooks case, the police rounded up the usual suspects and hauled them to the hospital to be examined. Six men, including Kennedy Brewer and Justin Johnson, voluntarily gave samples of their blood, saliva, and urine, as well as body, scalp, and pubic hair. Nothing unusual was noticed, except for the scratches all over the arms of Justin Johnson. He told the nurse they were "self-inflicted."

This was not significant because the police were hot on the trail of their only real suspect, Kennedy Brewer, who was adamantly claiming to be innocent.

Dr. Hayne concluded that Christine had been strangled and raped. He collected a sample of semen. He also found numerous abrasions on her arms and legs and suspected they were bite marks. Thus, he needed to consult Dr. West. The tag team worked flawlessly because West was already at the morgue helping with the autopsy. Not surprisingly, he, too, was of the opinion that the wounds were bite marks.

Once again, rapists in Mississippi were on a biting binge.

West returned to his clinic in Hattiesburg and met the sheriff of Noxubee County, who had brought with him a collection of suspects. West took plaster dental imprints from Kennedy Brewer and two other men.

Christine's mother, Gloria Jackson, was along for the trip and also gave a plaster dental mold. No one knew why. As in the first case, there was no suspicion that the mother had taken her daughter from the house, raped, strangled, bit, and killed her, flung her into the creek, then returned to her bed.

Absent from the excursion to West's clinic was the killer, Justin Johnson. The police did not ask him to provide a dental mold. Not that it would have mattered now that Dr. West was practically running the investigation. He knew the police strongly suspected Kennedy Brewer and it was his job to close the case.

A week later he came through. In a letter to the sheriff, he wrote, "The bite marks found on the body of Christine Jackson were indeed and without a doubt inflicted by Kennedy Brewer."

—

Since the authorities now had samples of Justin Johnson's blood and saliva, the obvious next step would have been to compare them to the semen taken from Christine's body. This did not happen, not at that time anyway. Sixteen years would pass before the samples were compared. Meanwhile, Kennedy Brewer would come within days of being executed by lethal injection.

By 1992, the science and technology of DNA testing was still evolving. It was being used to solve criminal cases but seldom in Mississippi.

What was available at that time was bite mark analysis, and with it came a long and contentious history. The majority of legitimate scientists and forensic experts believed it was thoroughly unreliable. It was considered "junk science," along with comparisons of hair, boot prints, blood spatter, glass breakage, and other matching "proof." However, since it had been used in trials for decades, the courts allowed it.

—

In a 2001 study, twenty-five well-known bite mark experts were given four identical sets of bite marks and asked to compare them with seven sets of dental molds. The error rate was an astonishing 63.5 percent. Only one-third accurately "matched" the marks with the teeth. Almost all of them continued consulting and testifying in bite mark cases as if the study meant nothing.

The specialty of bite mark analysis is based on three assumptions. The first is that each person's teeth are unique and leave prints that are traceable. The second is that skin, once bitten, has markings that are distinguishable. The third is that trained experts can study the marks and identify who made them.

None of these assumptions are supported by scientific evidence. In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) declared that bite mark analysis as a forensic specialty was not based on science. As recently as 2022, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that skin cannot record and preserve the details of a bite, and, further, that analysts do a lousy job of matching teeth marks with whoever did the biting. In many cases, the findings were so conflicted the analysts could not even agree on what was a bite and what was not.

The NIST and NAS reports fall in line with other studies. In 2016, the Texas Forensic Science Commission declared bite mark analysis so unfounded that it should no longer be used in criminal trials. A moratorium was also recommended by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

But, science be damned. Bite mark analysis is still allowed in most jurisdictions; sought by prosecutors, presented by experts, approved by judges, believed by jurors, and rubber-stamped by appellate courts.

—

These later studies were, of course, no benefit to Kennedy Brewer in his trial. Dr. West, after having been qualified as an expert and identified as one of the leading forensic odontologists in the country, testified for hours. As in the Brooks trial, he used enlarged photos of the bite marks and molds of Kennedy's teeth and explained in excruciating detail the preciseness of his analysis. He explained his "direct comparison" method of actually taking a mold of the suspect's teeth and pressing it into the child's flesh.

The autopsy was recorded by video, though the judge refused to show it to the jury because he found it too prejudicial. There was music blaring in the background, conversations between Hayne and West and their assistants, and "callous" behavior by the doctors. Years later, another bite mark expert studied the video and described it: "Dr. West placed Kennedy Brewer's dental molds directly onto Christine Jackson's body several times, with sufficient force to create visible marks."

West's "direct comparison" method, a procedure he alone pioneered, actually created the bite marks he was using to nail Kennedy Brewer.

On March 24, 1995, after deliberating for only an hour and a half, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Two days later, it returned with a sentence of death. The judge set an execution date two months away and ended the farce of a trial by dramatically saying to Kennedy, "May God have mercy on your soul."

—

By 1995, the Hayne and West team was attracting plenty of attention and not all of it was positive. Defense lawyers were complaining loudly and reporters were digging through their cases. They were finding plenty of sensational material.

In a 1991 case, Dr. West testified that by using his incredible ultraviolet light technique, he could match an abrasion on the victim's body with the shoelaces of the defendant. He also matched an invisible pattern on the defendant's palm with the strap of the victim's purse. In a rape case, he matched wounds on the victim's vagina to the defendant's teeth. Then, using the West Phenomenon, he also found indentions in the defendant's hand that matched a screwdriver allegedly used to threaten the victim. In another case, he matched abdominal bruises to a pair of hiking boots. In a sensational case, State v. Keko, the victim had been dead, embalmed, and buried for fourteen months before the body was exhumed. The team of Hayne and West quickly found a bite mark that they, somehow, had missed during the autopsy. Using his yellow goggles and special ultraviolet light, Dr. West declared the bite mark had been inflicted near the time of death, and had "indeed and without a doubt" been caused by the teeth of Tony Keko (the defendant). Defense lawyers successfully argued for a new trial and challenged West's credentials. At the time, he was under suspension by the American Board of Pathology. When the trial judge refused to allow him to testify, the State (Louisiana) dropped the charges and Tony Keko was released. His wife's murder was never solved.

And then there was the infamous Bologna Sandwich Case. In 1993, an elderly woman named Amy Ware was eating a bologna sandwich when someone broke into her house, robbed, and murdered her. The police found a half-eaten bologna sandwich and froze it. Her body was taken to Dr. Hayne for an autopsy. He consulted Dr. West, who, for some reason, didn't examine the sandwich for several months. When he finally got around to it, he claimed the teeth marks were consistent with the teeth of the prime suspect, Calvin Banks. They were inconsistent with those of Amy Ware, the victim. However, Hayne and West got their stories screwed up and West didn't realize that Hayne, during the autopsy, had found the remains of a half-eaten bologna sandwich in the victim's stomach. If she had eaten half the sandwich—the proof was in her stomach—how could the teeth marks on the uneaten portion not belong to her? Was it plausible that Calvin Banks took a bite or two either before or after he killed her, then left the rest behind? West took photos of the frozen sandwich; then, for some reason, he threw it away.

Forrest Allgood prosecuted Calvin Banks for the murder. West testified and convinced the jury that the teeth marks in the sandwich belonged to Calvin Banks. The jury bought it and convicted him. The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the legitimacy of bite mark analysis but tossed the conviction because West threw away the sandwich before the defense could examine it.

In 1992, another elderly woman, Georgia Kemp, was found dead by firefighters in her home. Investigators determined her house had been intentionally set on fire, ostensibly to cover up her murder. Hayne's autopsy revealed knife wounds as the cause of death. He also said she had been raped, though no biological evidence was found. His report made no mention of bite marks. Ms. Kemp's body was embalmed and buried. Suspicion quickly fell upon Eddie Lee Howard, an unemployed man who lived in the general area. He had a sex offense on his record that made him all the more likely to have committed the crime. He was arrested on suspicion of murder, but more evidence was needed. So the body was exhumed and sent back to Dr. Hayne for a more thorough examination. Not surprisingly, he then noticed several bite marks he had somehow missed the first time around. He called in West, who made a dental impression of Howard's teeth. Voilà! The bite marks were without a doubt made by Howard.

Forrest Allgood prosecuted Eddie Lee Howard for the murder. At trial, Howard insisted on representing himself, with predictable results. He was sentenced to death. The Mississippi Supreme Court again affirmed the use of bite mark analysis but reversed the conviction because Howard had no lawyer. He had one for his second trial but was found guilty anyway.

Eddie Lee Howard spent twenty-six years on death row before being exonerated by DNA testing in 2020. The murder was never solved.

—

In spite of reversing the convictions of Calvin Banks and Eddie Lee Howard, the Mississippi Supreme Court has never shown much sympathy for defendants claiming to be victims of questionable forensics. It affirmed the conviction of Levon Brooks in an 8–1 decision and heartily endorsed bite mark analysis. It held that such evidence is "universally admissible in Mississippi Courts," and said it was as reliable as fingerprints and DNA. The lone dissenting judge called it unreliable, subjective, and not based on science. He also blistered Dr. West with a long and thorough summary of a growing list of outrageous claims.

Kennedy Brewer fared no better with the court. In a unanimous decision, it upheld his conviction and swatted away attacks on West by saying, "The record shows that Dr. West possessed the knowledge, skill, experience, training, and education necessary to qualify as an expert in forensic odontology."

Unfortunately, Mississippi, like most states, elects its judges; all of them. From the lowly justice court judges—untrained jurists not even required to have a high school diploma—to the nine members of its supreme court. Hardball politics and big money often contaminate the elections, with special interests hiding behind the ever-protective shield of law and order. During West's career as an expert witness, the supreme court justices rarely questioned his qualifications and methods. The lone dissenter in the appeal of Levon Brooks faced a well-financed opponent whose slick television ads labeled him as "the only justice who voted to reverse the conviction of the murderer of a three-year-old girl."

The dissenter lost by thirty points.

Again and again, the supreme court endorsed the work of Hayne and West and approved one dubious conviction after another. It seemed oblivious to the growing tide of complaints from defense lawyers, reporters, other experts, and even law enforcement officials.

One outrageous case, though, proved too much for the Mississippi Supreme Court.

In State v. Tyler Edmonds, the defendant was a thirteen-year-old boy being tried as an adult for murder. Forrest Allgood was once again prosecuting, and, not surprisingly, was again seeking the death penalty. His star witness was Dr. Hayne, who told the jury that, based on the angle of the bullet's entry into the stomach of the victim, he was of the opinion that not one, but two people had pulled the trigger of the rifle. This testimony fit snugly with Allgood's convoluted theory of the crime. As usual, Hayne was so slick on the witness stand that the unsophisticated jurors bought his testimony and convicted Tyler Edmonds.

In a rare act of judicial bravery, the supreme court reversed on the grounds that Hayne had obviously stepped beyond his field of expertise. During the second trial, and without Hayne's two-hands-on-the-trigger nonsense, the jury acquitted Tyler. He was released after spending five years in jail.

—

A California lawyer named Christopher Plourd was furious when his innocent client was wrongfully convicted twice for the murder of a cocktail waitress. The client spent ten years in prison and was almost executed. The case against him was built solely on the bite mark testimony of a local dentist. After his client was exonerated, Mr. Plourd decided to expose the quackery. He and a friend named James Rix, who was not involved in the case, devised a sting operation. They used the old photos of the alleged bite marks on the victim's breast, and paid a dentist to make a plaster mold of Rix's teeth. Mr. Plourd looked around the country at the so-called leading forensic odontologists and, by chance, selected Dr. Michael West. He called West, fed him a fictitious story, and hired him to consult. He sent West the photos, the mold of Rix's teeth, and a check for $750. Two months later, West responded with a letter and a twenty-minute video in which he carefully walked the viewer through his thorough analysis. No doubt the teeth (Rix's) caused the bite marks.

Though a complete fabrication as part of a sting, the video is astonishing to watch. West is a confident, polished testifier, and speaks like an expert who's been through many trials and knows how to relate to laymen. He explains his analysis in dental and medical terms, and is believable. It's easy to see how juries could be convinced he knew what he was talking about.

Mr. Plourd publicized the hoax and tried to bring attention to West and his bogus science. For a decade afterward, defense lawyers in Mississippi tried in vain to use it to convince judges to prevent West from testifying.

They were not successful.

—

In 2001 Brewer's lawyers convinced the Mississippi Supreme Court to allow another DNA test. The results stunned the State. Kennedy Brewer was excluded as the source. The semen had been left behind by another man.

His lawyers ran back to the court and insisted that the charges be dropped and their client immediately released. By then DNA testing was routinely freeing innocent men who had been wrongfully convicted, and in virtually every other case the tests were deemed conclusive of innocence.

Not so in Mississippi. The court refused to believe Brewer was innocent and said, among other absurdities, that "DNA evidence does not prove conclusively that Brewer did not murder the victim," and that there was enough other evidence to indicate Brewer's involvement. The only other physical evidence was the bite mark testimony from Dr. West.

Instead of reopening the case and trying to find the killer—the police had hair, blood, and saliva samples from several suspects, including Justin Johnson—Forrest Allgood announced he would retry Kennedy for the rape and murder. Fifteen years after the crime, and after being cleared by DNA testing, Kennedy would face another trial. He was hauled from death row at Parchman back to the Noxubee County Jail, where he languished for almost six years as Forrest Allgood delayed a trial.

In 2007, lawyers from the Innocence Project in New York were allowed to do additional testing. Several boxes of evidence were sent to a lab in California for examination. The analysts used cheek swabs taken from the Brooks case, one of which was from Justin Johnson, and matched it to the semen taken from Chistine's body. Fifteen years after the rape and murder, the crime was finally solved.

The killer was identified as Justin Johnson. He was arrested and soon confessed to the murder of Christine Jackson. He led the investigators to the old house where Kennedy and Gloria once lived with her children, showed them the broken window, said he looked in, saw a man and a woman asleep in the bed, saw two girls asleep on the floor, and described how he lifted Christine through the window without waking her.

The police asked if he was involved in an earlier murder, and he admitted killing Courtney Smith. He remembered driving his car to a pond in the woods, walking to a nearby house, entering through the unlocked front door, walking past a man sleeping on the sofa, finding two little girls asleep in the bedroom, and taking the younger one from the house and into the woods, where he killed her and dumped her body into the pond.

—

Ten days later, Kennedy Brewer entered a packed courtroom and faced the same judge who, thirteen years earlier, had dispatched him to death row with an ominous "May God have mercy on your soul." This time, though, the judge simply said, "You're hereby discharged. You are free to go."

No explanation. No apology.

A month later, Levon Brooks was exonerated in the same courtroom.

Combined, the men spent over thirty years behind bars. The State paid them each $50,000 a year for time served, but capped it at the maximum of $500,000.

—

Four more years passed before the disgraced authorities in Noxubee County could muster the courage to bring Justin Johnson into the courtroom. He pled guilty to two counts of capital murder and was given life without parole. He described how he abducted and killed both girls. He raped Christine but not Courtney.

—

He did not bite either child.