The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist

by Radley Balko

  swelled to become a thriving plantation: Boswell Stevens Papers, 1918–1986, Mississippi State University Library Special Collections.

  president of the state bureau: John Anderson Tyson, Historical Notes of Noxubee County, Mississippi, 90. These historical notes were originally published by John Tyson in the Macon (MS) Beacon and then collected in 1928. A copy of Historical Notes of Noxubee County is on file in the Special Collections of the J. D. Williams Library, University of Mississippi.

  state’s defenses against integration: Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 195, 216.

  supporter of the agency’s goals: Letter from John Satterfield to Erle Johnston, Sept. 20, 1963, Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Digital Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

  “keep them under control”: Memorandum from Zack J. Van Landingham to director of the State Sovereignty Commission (April 6, 1959), Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Digital Collection.

  same amount of NAACP activity: Noxubee County Report from Tom Scarbrough, Aug. 29, 1960, Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Digital Collection.

  child beauty pageants: Tyson, Historical Notes of Noxubee County.

  “something beautiful about it.”: Boswell Stevens, interview by Tucker Carrington.

  150 black tenants: Ibid.

  him after his second: Letter from Robert B. Prather to Levon Brooks, Jan. 13, 1992; Transcript of record, State of Mississippi v. Levon Brooks, No. 5937 (Noxubee Cnty. Circuit Ct. Jan. 13, 1992) (hereinafter Brooks trial transcript), 69–73.

  as well as two probable witnesses: Letter from Prather to Brooks; Brooks trial transcript, 69–73.

  unrelated burglary charge: Letter from Prather to Brooks; Brooks trial transcript, 69–73.

  “over the weekend.”: Letter from Prather to Brooks; Brooks trial transcript, 69–73.

  And that was that: Letter from Prather to Brooks; Brooks trial transcript, 69–73.

  school’s conservative students: “Ox Hunts Doves,” Mirror (S.D. Lee High School, Columbus, MS), Feb. 6, 1971.

  fast becoming a small minority: Ibid.

  “throwing human excrement at cops.”: Ibid.

  assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.: Ibid.

  “then you are out.”: Ibid.

  freshman football team: “Ole Miss Frosh, LSU Vying Today,” Delta Democrat Times (Greenville, MS), Oct. 8, 1971.

  Fun Time with Uncle Bunky: Ron Williams, “Robert ‘Uncle Bunky’ Williams: A Local Living Legend Reflects on His Storied Career,” Columbus (MS) Packet, March 8, 2012.

  others began to question their credibility: Brent E. Turvey and Craig M. Cooley, Miscarriages of Justice: Actual Innocence, Forensic Evidence, and the Law (Oxford, UK: Academic, 2014), 245; Josie Duffy Rice, “Good News: Mississippi Votes Out Notoriously Aggressive Prosecutor,” Daily Kos, Nov. 5, 2015, www.dailykos.com/story/2015/11/5/1445335/-Good-news-Mississippi-replaces-notoriously-aggressive-prosecutor-with-advocate-for-reform; Peter Neufeld, “Keynote Address,” Southwestern Law Review 37 (2008): 1051; “District Attorney Offers Comments on Brewer, Brooks Cases,” Macon (MS) Beacon, Aug. 7, 2008; Nina Martin, “A Stillborn Child, a Charge of Murder, and the Disputed Case Law on Fetal Harm,” ProPublica, March 18, 2014.

  “recall him laughing.”: Anonymous defense attorney, interview by Radley Balko.

  “It always has been,”: “Candidate Profiles: District Attorney,” Starkville Insider, July 14, 2015, www.starkville.org/candidate-profiles-district-attorney.

  “for the John Birch Society.”: J. D. Sanders, interview by David Fechheimer, Oct. 27, 2011.

  “he often acted from there.”: Former Mississippi state official, interview by Radley Balko.

  planting the pot: Isabelle Altman, “Macon Woman, 70, Serving Decade Prison Term for Pot,” Columbus (MS) Dispatch, April 23, 2016.

  cocaine isn’t what caused the miscarriage: Hart, “A Stillborn Child.”

  too savvy to get caught: Andrew Hazard, “Allgood Believes His Process Works,” Columbus (MS) Dispatch, Oct. 28, 2015.

  “he’d have been successful at it.”: André de Gruy, interview by Radley Balko.

  dangerous or evil: Years after Kennedy Brewer was exonerated and freed, Allgood still insisted he was guilty of something. See the transcript of his interview with documentarian Joe Jork: “Now let me pose you a question, you really think she’d be the first child that was ever sold for a crack rock or the first child that was ever sold for even 50 bucks with which to purchase a crack rock.” Transcript from interview of Forrest Allgood by Joe York for the film Mississippi Innocence, 2011.

  pleading guilty in that case or another: See deposition of Dr. Steven Hayne, Hayne v. Innocence Project (April 26, 2012), 170. When asked about criticism of his testimony in the case with the skeletonized body, Hayne noted that the suspect pleaded guilty to manslaughter. About Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, he said, “I don’t think they were guilty. That doesn’t mean they weren’t involved in some aspect.” Hayne v. Innocence Project, (April 27, 2012), 19. West speculated that in spite of Levon Brooks’s exoneration, Brooks might still have kidnapped the victim and traded her to Johnson in exchange for drugs; see deposition of Michael West, Eddie Lee Howard v. State of Mississippi, No. 2000-0015-CV1H (Lowndes Cnty. Circuit Ct. May 4, 2016), 88–89.

  commission of the crime: Lee V. Robinson, case no. 121543, Mississippi State Hospital.

  suggestive of a sexual predator: Ibid.

  The report stated that he was: Ibid.

  “in the shape of a man”: Brooks trial transcript, 461.

  “left his mark,”: Ibid., 461.

  “that man… is Levon Brooks”: Ibid., 460–462.

  based solely on the bite mark evidence: Carol S. Steiker, “Gideon at Fifty: A Problem of Political Will,” Yale Law Journal 122 (2013): 701.

  without a rebuttal: Brooks trial transcript, 462.

  “go to the devil.”: Ibid., 472–473.

  was named “Titee.”: Ibid., 492.

  “my momma boyfriend.”: Ibid., 492.

  and then “I forgot.”: Ibid., 498–499.

  played together “all the time.”: Ibid., 499.

  (She had.): Ibid., 500.

  a gun or a knife: Ibid., 505.

  eating potato chips: Ibid., 504.

  a bag of money: Ibid., 504.

  “to tell these people?”: Ibid., 509.

  she replied, “I forgot.”: Ibid., 509.

  “Yes,” she replied: Ibid., 512.

  Uncle Bunky introduced into evidence: Ibid., 513–514.

  the judge refused: Ibid., 513–514.

  in his closing argument: Ibid., 1024–1036, 1059, 1067.

  “the guy that took my sister.”: Ibid., 1024–1035.

  “doesn’t mean it wasn’t said.”: Forrest Allgood, email interview by Radley Balko.

  expert in the field of forensic pathology: Brooks trial transcript, 682–684.

  He didn’t: Brooks trial transcript, 685.

  Michael West, who concurred: Brooks trial transcript, 697–698.

  who killed the girl: Brooks trial transcript, 695, 698, 703.

  made by human teeth: Declaration of J. C. Upshaw Downs, MD, Dec. 1, 2011, Hayne v. Innocence Project, 18 (“It was not reasonable for Dr. Hayne to conclude that the external findings could be pre-mortem or even peri-mortem human bitemarks”); declaration of Michael Baden, Hayne v. Innocence Project, 5 (“[Hayne’s] evaluation of the death of Courtney Smith erroneously interpreted post-mortem artifacts and decomposition changes as the result of adult human bite marks which were then, again, specifically and erroneously matched to the teeth of Mr. Levon Brooks”).

  the skin around the marks: Declaration of Downs, 14, Hayne v. Innocence Project: “Dr. Hayne’s failure to personally perform these analyses abrogates one of the chief purposes of the practice of Forensic Pathology and, therefore, fails to meet the standard of accepted practice.”

  deferred to West in
his report: Declaration of Downs, 14–15, Hayne v. Innocence Project: “A practitioner calling in a presumably more qualified consultant maintains a level of responsibility for the consultant’s findings and failures. If, as here, Dr. Hayne knew that Dr. West failed to adhere to accepted procedure and then accepted Dr. West’s opinion, he is guilty of adopting that mistake by virtue of having executed Ms. Smith’s autopsy report without further inquiry into Dr. West’s findings.”

  repeat over and over again: See Willie Earl Harris, Capital Murder Investigation Memo, Grace Ford Wiseman, victim, May 24, 1991; State v. David Duplantis & Ken Strickland, 91-DP-1220, Newton County, MS; Duplantis v. State, 644 So.2d 1235 (Miss. 1994); Duplantis v. State, 708 So.2d 1327 (Miss. 1998); Keko v. Hingle, 1999 WL 508406; Calvin Banks v. State of Mississippi, 725 So.2d 711 (Miss. 1997); State of Mississippi v. Kennedy Brewer, 725 So.2d 106 (Miss. 1998); State of Louisiana v. Jimmie C. Duncan, No. 99-KA-2615 (La. 2001); Radley Balko, “Solving Kathy Mabry’s Murder,” Huffington Post, Jan. 17, 2013.

  test anything in the kit: Brooks trial transcript, 696.

  tying Brooks to the crime scene: Mississippi Crime Lab Report, Supplementary Report, MCL No. 90-376 (Dec. 16, 1991).

  “A broom handle for example?”: Brooks trial transcript, 691.

  didn’t involve a broom: In a 2017 email interview, Allgood wrote that he couldn’t recall mentioning the broom handle, but that if he did, “I rather suspect, however, that I was told by the Medical Examiner that such an implement could have caused the injuries he found.”

  bluntly pointed object: Declaration of Downs, Hayne v. Innocence Project, 19: “When asked about what type weapon might have caused these injuries, Dr. Hayne excludes generic broad categories ‘such things as a piece of metal and the like.’ Then immediately follows when queried, ‘What kind of object could have, in fact, caused those injuries doctor?’ with very specific exemplars ‘A finger, a penis or a similar object.’ Obviously, given the nature of this case and the injuries, such a narrow proffer by the witness could rightly be considered highly biased in that both would require direct physical penetration of the victim’s body by the perpetrator’s body—something unknown by the Forensic Pathologist. Only when further questioned by the state was another item suggested: ‘A broom handle for example?’ ‘Yes.’ In testifying to the overly specific (finger, penis) to the specific exclusion of all other myriad possibilities of items consistent with causing such a wound (basically a blunt object capable of penetrating the damaged orifice to the requisite depth) without providing clarifying general principles does a scientific disservice to the trier of fact in that it at least subliminally (if not overtly) suggests that such specificity is possible and that the perpetrator personally violated the victim. There is no scientific basis to assert such a highly specific and potentially inflammatory as a posited weapon in deference to others.”

  $1,950 for his testimony: Brooks trial transcript, 682–708; Letter from Dr. Steven Hayne to Forrest Allgood, Jan. 22, 1992.

  in a demonstration for the jury: Billing statement from Michael H. West to Forrest Allgood.

  “I wouldn’t challenge his qualifications.”: Letter from Forrest Allgood to Bob Prather, Nov. 7, 1991.

  “senior crime scene analyst.”: Brooks trial transcript, 712.

  then he named each one: Ibid., 715.

  “the FBI academy in Quantico, Virginia.”: Ibid., 712–713.

  West said that it did not: Ibid., 715–716.

  “You have to eat, right doctor?”: Ibid., 716.

  “Yes, sir,” West replied: Ibid.

  after they’ve been extracted: Ibid., 717–718.

  citing a study from the early 1980s: Reidar F. Sognnaes, “Computer Comparison of Bite Mark Patterns in Identical Twins,” Journal of the American Dental Association 105 (Sept. 1982): 449. For criticism of this study, see Michael Bowers, “Arguments on the Individuality of Human Teeth,” presented at the 2000 American Academy of Forensic Sciences conference (“There are experimental problems in this study.… This is a seriously over-stated conclusion that has been perpetuated in the odontology literature”); Erica Beecher Monas, “Reality Bites: The Illusion of Science in Bite Mark Evidence,” Cardozo Law Review 30 (2009): 1369 (stating that the study was “flawed by being extremely small [five sets of twins], and failing to set out a detailed methodology”); see generally Michael J. Saks et al., “Forensic Bite Mark Identification: Weak Foundations, Exaggerated Claims,” Law and the Biosciences 3 (2016): 538; Iain A. Pretty, “The Barriers to Achieving an Evidence Base for Bite Mark Analysis,” Forensic Science International 159, no. 1 (2006): S110–S120.

  “or tool marks, then?”: Brooks trial transcript, 719.

  “Exactly,” West responded: Ibid.

  I can look at his teeth and tell you if it’s him: Ibid., 720.

  “an individual through a bite mark?”: Ibid., 722, 750.

  “Yes, sir,” West said: Ibid., 750.

  “very definite fractures and bevels.”: Ibid., 723.

  “a scalloped-out area with a sharp edge.”: Ibid.

  “some wear—what we call wear facets.”: Ibid.

  “back of the upper teeth,”: Ibid.

  “stomach or your buttocks or on your legs,”: Ibid., 724.

  “grab into the skin and pull across it.”: Ibid.

  adjust for all of these variables: See Mary A. Bush, Peter J. Bush, and H. David Sheets, “A Study of Multiple Bitemarks Inflicted in Human Skin by a Single Dentition Using Geometric Morphometric Analysis,” Forensic Science International 211 (2011): 1–8; Mary A. Bush, Peter J. Bush, and H. David Sheets, “Similarity and Match Rates of the Human Dentition in 3 Dimensions: Relevance to Bitemark Analysis,” International Journal of Legal Medicine 125, no. 6 (2011): 779–784; Mary A. Bush, Peter J. Bush, and H. David Sheets, “Statistical Evidence for the Similarity of the Human Dentition,” Journal of Forensic Science 56, no. 1 (2011): 118–123; Mary A. Bush et al., “The Response of Skin to Applied Stress: Investigation of Bitemark Distortion in a Cadaver Model,” Journal of Forensic Science 55, no. 1 (2009): 71–76; Mary A. Bush et al., “Biomechanical Factors in Human Dermal Bitemarks in a Cadaver Model,” Journal of Forensic Science 54, no. 1 (2009): 167–176; Mary A. Bush, Howard I. Cooper, and Robert B.J. Dorion, “Inquiry into the Scientific Basis for Bitemark Profiling and Arbitrary Distortion Compensation,” Journal of Forensic Science 55, no. 4 (2010): 976–983.

  “healthy intact tissue does not.”: Brooks trial transcript, 729.

  alleged wound on Courtney Smith’s wrist: Ibid., 731.

  just to be certain: Ibid., 726–730.

  “the wrist of Courtney Smith”: Ibid., 731–732.

  where none existed before: See Declaration of David R. Senn, DDS, Nov. 30, 2011, Hayne v. Innocence Project, 9: “The method of directly placing a suspect’s dental models onto the skin and repeatedly moving those models in direct contact with skin is unacceptable methodology. In fact, this action actually generates patterned injuries to the skin. The creation of postmortem artifacts is ample reason to avoid this technique.”

  claimed came from the defendant: See later discussion of Leigh Stubbs (chapter 12) and Jimmie Duncan (chapter 10) cases.

  crucial to his conclusions: One of West’s fellow bite mark analysts believes West did exactly that in the Kennedy Brewer case. See Declaration of David R. Senn, Steven Hayne v. the Innocence Project, 7: “Dr. West placed Kennedy Brewer’s dental models directly onto Christine Jackson’s body—multiple times—with sufficient force to create marks visible [sic], as can be seen in the videotaped examination that I reviewed.”

  “that didn’t happen.”: Brooks trial transcript, 744.

  “a few microns.”: Ibid., 755.

  “on this one.”: Ibid., 722, 727.

  $2,902.12 for his testimony: Ibid., 711–757; Petition, State of Mississippi v. Levon Brooks, no. 5937, Jan. 23, 1992.

  her current residence on Phillips Loop: Brooks trial transcript, 925–950.

  He declined: Ibid., 950–
954.

  “funny how that worked out, isn’t it?”: Ibid., 1024–1036, 1068–1069.

  “guilty of capital murder.”: Ibid., 1092.

  “been accused of harming one”: Ibid., 1126–1222.

  that Levon Brooks was guilty: Ibid., 1185–1187.

  “And it is.”: Ibid., 1236–1243, 1254–1261.

  “Thank you.”: Ibid., 1243.

  to err on the side of caution: Ibid., 1243.

  “Department of Corrections.”: Ibid., 1264.

  CHAPTER 10: KEEP THAT WOMAN UNDER CONTROL

  completed the previous year: Grace Simmons, “Miss. Native to Head State Forensic Lab,” Clarion Ledger (Jackson, MS), June 18, 1993.

  hard on those who took the job: See “Medical Examiner Job Still Vacant,” Clarksdale (MS) Press Register, Feb. 13, 1989.

  improvements were possible: Simmons, “Miss. Native to Head State Forensic Lab.”

  an asset to the office: Ibid.

  “fifty-five-gallon drums.”: Jim Fisher, “Dr. Ralph Erdmann: The Forensic Pathologist from Hell,” Jim Fisher True Crime, Dec. 26, 2015, http: //jimfishertruecrime.blogspot.com/2012/02/dr-ralph-erdmann-forensic-pathologist.html.

  with mounting caseloads: Sources for Erdmann narrative: Jim Dwyer, Peter Neufeld, and Barry Scheck, Actual Innocence: Five Days to Execution and Other Dispatches from the Wrongly Convicted (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 117–119; Robert Suro, “Ripples of a Pathologist’s Misconduct in Graves and Courts of West Texas,” New York Times, Nov. 21, 1992; Fisher, “Dr. Ralph Erdmann”; Chip Brown, “Pathologist Accused of Falsifying Autopsies, Botching Trial Evidence,” Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1992; Welsh S. White, Litigating in the Shadow of Death: Defense Attorneys in Capital Cases (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 152; Richard L. Fricker, “Reasonable Doubts,” American Bar Association Journal (Dec. 1993).

  “the Ralph Erdmann of Mississippi.”: Levon Brooks v. State of Mississippi, 748 So.2d 736, 750 (Miss. 1999) (McCrae, J., dissenting).

  in a year was 480: Dwyer, Neufeld, and Scheck, Actual Innocence, 117–119.