{"id":36557,"date":"2014-05-19T09:56:18","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T14:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/?p=36557"},"modified":"2014-09-23T08:25:35","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T13:25:35","slug":"washington-post-new-case-again-demonstrates-duplicity-of-embattled-mississippi-medical-examiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/washington-post-new-case-again-demonstrates-duplicity-of-embattled-mississippi-medical-examiner\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post: New case again demonstrates duplicity of embattled Mississippi medical examiner"},"content":{"rendered":"

In February<\/a>, I wrote about a Fifth Circuit decision rejecting the claims of a defendant who was convicted based on improbable testimony from the controversial medical examiner Steven Hayne. Over the course of about two decades, Hayne nearly monopolized Mississippi\u2019s criminal autopsy referrals, performing 1,500-1,800 autopsies per year all by himself. Most of these were done for the state\u2019s prosecutors. Hayne\u2019s testimony was responsible for several convictions that later resulted in acquittals after a new trial, dismissed charges, or DNA exonorations.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been covering this scandal\u00a0<\/a>for the better part of a decade now. Hayne has been found to have given testimony completely unsupported by science, regularly worked with known charlatans like the discredited \u201cbite mark expert\u201d Michael West, and has been sharply criticized by colleagues for his improbable workload, sloppy practices, and dubious testimony. He has also been shown\u00a0to have perjured himself<\/a>\u00a0about his qualifications. Despite all of this, and despite the fact that there are literally thousands of people in prison due in part or mostly to Hayne\u2019s autopsies and testimony, neither state nor federal courts have shown any interest in determining just how much damage Hayne may have done to the criminal justice system of Mississippi (and to a lesser extent Louisiana). The Mississippi legislature hasn\u2019t shown much interest. And state attorney general Jim Hood\u00a0continues to defend Hayne<\/a>. (Hood often used Hayne during his time as a district attorney.)<\/p>\n

In past cases, Hayne has included in his autopsy report the weight of a man\u2019s spleen, and made comments about its appearance, even though the man\u2019s spleen had been removed four years prior to his death. In an autopsy on a drowned infant, Hayne wrote down the weight of each of the child\u2019s kidneys, even though one of them had previously been removed. In one murder case, Hayne documented removing and examining the victim\u2019s ovaries and uterus even though the victim was male. Read the entire story.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In February, I wrote about a Fifth Circuit decision rejecting the claims of a defendant who was convicted based on improbable testimony from the controversial medical examiner Steven Hayne. Over the course of about two decades, Hayne nearly monopolized Mississippi\u2019s criminal autopsy referrals, performing 1,500-1,800 autopsies per year all by himself. Most of these wereRead the story …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[484],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nWashington Post: New case again demonstrates duplicity of embattled Mississippi medical examiner - Ole Miss News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/washington-post-new-case-again-demonstrates-duplicity-of-embattled-mississippi-medical-examiner\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Washington Post: New case again demonstrates duplicity of embattled Mississippi medical examiner - Ole Miss News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In February, I wrote about a Fifth Circuit decision rejecting the claims of a defendant who was convicted based on improbable testimony from the controversial medical examiner Steven Hayne. Over the course of about two decades, Hayne nearly monopolized Mississippi\u2019s criminal autopsy referrals, performing 1,500-1,800 autopsies per year all by himself. Most of these wereRead the story …\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/washington-post-new-case-again-demonstrates-duplicity-of-embattled-mississippi-medical-examiner\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Ole Miss News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"-0001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-09-23T13:25:35+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@OleMissRebels\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@OleMissRebels\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/\",\"name\":\"Ole Miss News\",\"description\":\"The official source for University of Mississippi news\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/washington-post-new-case-again-demonstrates-duplicity-of-embattled-mississippi-medical-examiner\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/washington-post-new-case-again-demonstrates-duplicity-of-embattled-mississippi-medical-examiner\/\",\"name\":\"Washington Post: New case again demonstrates duplicity of embattled Mississippi medical examiner - Ole Miss News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"-0001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-09-23T13:25:35+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#\/schema\/person\/b50d8227752a4bc15dc36f74488aca5d\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/washington-post-new-case-again-demonstrates-duplicity-of-embattled-mississippi-medical-examiner\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#\/schema\/person\/b50d8227752a4bc15dc36f74488aca5d\",\"name\":\"whamilton\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/0.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c89d29156b926a31c17485176d46ebdd?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"whamilton\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36557"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36558,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36557\/revisions\/36558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}