Radley Balko has a devastating story in today's Wall Street Journal about a Mississippi medical examiner who appears to think that he is on CSI. The reality is more like the Keystone Kops:
In January, Mississippi's Supreme Court took an unusual step. In the murder trial of 13-year-old Tyler Edmonds, the court tossed out the testimony of the medical examiner who had conducted the autopsy of the body.The reason? The medical examiner in the case, Dr. Steven Hayne, had testified under oath that he could tell from the bullet wounds in the body that Edmonds and his sister simultaneously held the gun to fire the fatal shot. Of course, as the court concluded, it is impossible to make such a determination from examining bullet wounds.
Former Columbus, Miss., Police Chief J.D. Sanders has been trying for years to draw attention to Dr. Hayne. "There's no question in my mind that there are innocent people doing time at Parchman Penitentiary due to the testimony of Dr. Hayne," he says. "There may even be some on death row."
In addition to state Supreme Court justices and police officers, defense lawyers, crime lab experts and state medical examiners have all made public their concerns with his practice, and with the testimony he has contributed to hundreds of cases over a 20-year career.
Although Dr. Hayne refused to speak with me, the concerns about him start with his own words. According to his comments on the stand, he performs anywhere from 1,500 to 1,800 autopsies a year. The National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) says a medical examiner should perform no more than 250 autopsies per year. After 325, the organization refuses to certify an examiner's practice.
"You can't do it," says Vincent DiMaio, author of Forensic Pathology, widely considered the profession's guiding textbook. "After 250 autopsies, you start making small mistakes. At 300, you're going to get mental and physical strains on your body. Over 350, and you're talking about major fatigue and major mistakes."
He's well-known as an idiot in this state. Unfortunately, juries aren't exactly made up of the brightest people either. I'm sure that Sanders is correct about him.
So, we have police officers, judges, other crime laboratory people claiming publicly the man is a nut, and this has been known for years.
So, how many of these people have been on the stand as defense witnesses to impugn this guy's competence and honesty?
God save us from morons with their hands on the levers of the state, and let me know when an idiot Wal-Mart executive can have his employees executed.
Megan, is there a link to an online version of the story?
How long do autopsies generally take? 1,500 a year, even if he works 7 days a week, would be like 4 or 5 a day. Add in actual time for analysis and time testifying, does he have any time in his day that doesn't somehow involve dead bodies?
Are there even that many stiffs in the county to be autopsied?
"is there a link to an online version of the story?
Posted by Dan | October 6, 2007 2:15 PM"
~~~~~~~~~~~~
KIDSINCOURT.NET
We have campaigned for this child's justice since day one of the case.
Please scroll down to his board thread for information.
Knight
Link to the article is here: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB119162544567850662-lMyQjAxMDE3OTAxNjYwMjY1Wj.html
Should be good for non-subscribers for a week, according to Balko's blog.
As a follow up to mad6798j's comment above, regarding the time required to perform that many autopsies... Jackson, MS, has 176k population. I have a hard time believing that they would even need 1500 autopsies to be performed by the ME in a year.
To coment on Steven Hayne. This man claimed to have done 1800 Autopsies a year. That breaks down to approx. 36 a month,wich further breaks down to 7.5 autopsies a day. A precise autopsy does not take a mere 5 minutes. So how pray tell did this hired gun ever do as many as he claims?
I know of two lives that he has personally helped to ruin! That sherriff is correct when he said many innocent people are quite possibly in Parchman doin life because this guy took some money under the table at some point to toss in his garbage at a trial.
I have also read other statements from law enforcement in the south that said if you need evidence you dont have just call Dr. Hayne!
With out a doubt Hayne should have his licence to practice revoked!
On the other hand, the National Association of Medical Examiners sounds like some sort of union pushing for cushy work rules for its members. "No more than one autopsy a day. Any more is exhausting and cuts into our golf games."
I wonder to what extent many of the routine aspects of an autopsy, prep and clean-up for instance, could be passed off to medical technicians? Is the current situation similar to requiring a gaffer to replace the toilet paper in the port-a-john at a Hollywood film location?
A great advertisement for better education and restricting jury pools to people who can pass a basic intelligence test. Perhaps its also the time to limit who can vote to those that are educated? Even though its not a poll tax, it sure seems to go against the egalitarian grain, though, neh? Still, do you want more stupidities like this to happen, more frequently, in your neighborhood?
He does this all over the state, pop. 2.8M, not just in one place. That explains - partly - his numbers.
As far as time to conduct a proper postmortem, one a day on average is probably correct if the results of the exam will be used in a criminal trial. In postmortems conducted to determine non-criminal cause of death, oftentimes there is a very strong suspicion of why death occurred - and so the exam can be much more limited. (The presence of trace evidence, for example, need not be determined.) Although there are technicians who do handle cleanup and assist in the process, the actual dissection is done by the pathologist. The body is fully inspected, inside and out; major organs are weighed; abnormal findings must be evaluated more thoroughly (for example, apparent tumors will be cut open and have microscope slides prepared from them). The examination of the brain takes place weeks after the earlier part, so that it can become firmer in formaldehyde - its natural consistency being rather like half-congealed gelatin.
All in all, it takes quite a while to do one properly. When you count in time spent writing reports, testifying in court, and the like - the standard is not at all unreasonable.
NAME refuses to certify a Medical Examiner Office after 325 autopsies per doc???? Not so!
That would require medical examiner compliance with NAME standards and oversight by NAME.
For an example of both lack of compliance by an ME office and lack of oversight by NAME, go to the following website for a NAME certified ME office: http://mepublic.tarrantcounty.com/mepublic/
Take the time to tabulate how many autopsies a particular pathologist completes per year and it will be easy to see that NAME should decertify the office. But does it happen? No.
Jackson, MS, has 176k population. I have a hard time believing that they would even need 1500 autopsies to be performed by the ME in a year.
The Jackson metro area has a little over 500K people, and as others have noted, he serves the entire state, and probably some of Louisiana as well. The bodies are usually sent to Jackson, rather than him traveling -- nowhere in this state is more than four hours from Jackson, so it's not hard to ship one down.
Also, there are less than 20 pathologists here, to serve the entire state. It's quite possible that some of his huge caseload may be a function of overload.
James Thom, your math is off. 1800 autopsies a year is 150 a month, 5 a day if you work seven days a week.
I actually know the guy personally -- his daughters were friends of mine in junior high, and he and my dad were friends as well, At that time, he worked all the time and was almost never home until quite late at night, even on weekends. Based on that experience, I find the autopsy count to be plausible.
It is worth pointing out that this is a Radley Balko article about a guy who testified in the Corey Maye trial. He has an axe to grind and given his misrepresentations in the past, I won't get worked up about this just yet.
Patterico, is that you?
This is a disgrace, and all of the prosecutors that use this guy should be on death row.
He gives them whatever they want in terms of "evidence" to convict, usually without even looking at the body.
There is a long article in this month's Reason magazine about this guy. For those doing the math on his autopsies, it gets worse - according to his own testimony, in addition to the autopsies he does, he has another job he spends up to 55 hours a week doing, so subtract that out of the time he's supposed to be doing autopsies.
But the truly disgraceful thing is not him, it is the system that has enabled him to do this for 20 years and the courts that know all about it and yet do nothing. Even this ruling really is far too little, too late. An honest judiciary would throw out all convictions where he testified and would ban him from courtrooms for life. An honest prosecutor would prosecute this guy (and all of the prosecutors who used him knowing he was perjuring himself). But I doubt there are any honest prosecutors or judges in Mississippi, based on the simple evidence that this guy exists and thrived for 20 years with so much clear evidence of wrongdoing. Freaking disgusting.
I am supporting a boy in Mississippi who got life at barely age 15. Dr. Hayne testified at his trial for the prosecution. No one testified on behalf of the child. It was a self defense case where the boy was being attacked by his grandfather who was 6'3" tall and weighed 180 lbs and the child was 5'8" and weighed 130 lbs soaking wet. The child was backed into a corner. But Dr. Hayne testified that the knife wounds on the back of the hands of his grandfather were defensive wounds. Even though the child had said that the grandfather had his hands in fists and was swinging at him like a boxer. How did he know without being a witness to the stabbing that the wounds weren't offensive on the back of his hands? Another case, where Dr. Hayne just made up whatever fit the prosecutions case of 1st degree murder and passed it off as expert testimony to a jury who bought it. The boy is serving a life sentence in Mississippi.
Also even though the claim was self-defense and that the grandfather had Alzheimer's disease and PTSD, no brain tissue was taken during autopsy to be tested. www.myspace.com/savebrettjones
also, defense attornies working in the State of Mississippi, knowing this man is a nut, didn't bother to find their own expert to counter his testimony contrived for the prosecution. How can a boy being serving life when Dr. Hayne was the only expert in the trial?
"didn't bother to find their own expert to counter his testimony contrived for the prosecution."
More like, didn't have the time or money because they are public defenders.
JordanT - Precisely - the article I read indicated that a lot of public defenders who asked the court for money for their indigent defendants to hire an expert of their own were denied and told that there already was a "neutral" expert, that being Dr. Hayne. This is so disgusting it makes me ashamed to be an American and to be a lawyer in a system like this.
This is so typical of the "good ole' boy" mentality still present in Mississippi. Doesn't matter if you are qualified to do the job, as long as you know the right people.
There is no doubt in my mind that there are untold numbers in prison there now, wrongfully convicted thanks to his incompetent musings.
My 18 year old son has been in prison for 3 years, 47 years to go, thanks to the 'opinions' of the quack. My son was attacked by a grown man in a rage due to mental illness and had to fight for his life, yet this man testified that it wasn't so. He gave his account of what happened as if he were there, yet did not even test the brain of the attacker, even though mental degeneration (dementia) was reported present by the immediate family and their doctor.
This man apparently takes the prosecutor's desired results as his guideline for determination of death.
This is more along the lines of the travesty perpetrated in police states, where the police own everyone and their opinions. Someone needs to correct this problem and the results from it. All the convictions based on his opinions need to be thrown out and Dr Steven Haynes made to answer for his crimes.
It's not only innocent people going to prison because of this jerk--murders are being swept under the rug and killers walk free. My brother was murdered five years ago. Hayne ruled it a suicide and failed to mention a second gunshot wound in his report of autopsy. How does someone make that mistake? There's too much evidence available for it to have been ruled a suicide. There are also witnesses who, to this day, have not been questioned. We have tried for years to get someone to listen. I think the whole state is corrupt, or maybe just plain lazy. No one seems to want to get off their ass and question some witnesses. And heaven forbid, don't question those in office. Hayne's office refused to even talk to us about the autopsy report. After reading Balko's article, I understand why!! What can we do to take this guy down?