FRONTLINE
DOUBT
of them had previously been removed. In
another murder case, Hayne noted in his
report that he had removed and examined the decedent’s ovaries and uterus.
The victim was a man.
Mississippi’s autopsy system at the
time was loaded with bad incentives. Because prosecutors and the elected coroners assigned autopsies on a case-by-case
basis, doctors had a strong incentive to
tell them what they wanted to hear if
they wanted to benefit from future referrals. Sometimes, critics say, pleasing
prosecutors meant finding things that
would help them get convictions. Sometimes it meant reaching conclusions that
cleared a police officer or prison guard or
relative of an important person.
The state has made some progress in recent years, requiring that anyone who performs an autopsy for prosecutors be board
certified, and Mississippi now has a credentialed state medical examiner. But the
damage from the old system is ongoing.
“If hadn’t been Hayne,” the Innocence
Project’s Carrington says, “it would have
been someone else.”
Hayne performed most of his autopsies not in the state-of-the-art crime lab
in Jackso