DOUBT
HUFFINGTON
02.03.13
RADLEY BALKO
In a town with a population of
only 2,200, Mabry’s murder
shook the residents of Belzoni.
we were awful scared.”
While Gates was exonerated, Hayne
and West continued to apply their questionable brand of forensic analysis to
other cases. At the same time, their
work also began to attract more scrutiny,
though mostly from outside the state.
In 2001, a defense attorney in Arizona
tricked West into matching crime scene
photos of a bite mark left on a murder
victim’s breast to a dental mold taken
from the mouth of the attorney’s own
private investigator, who obviously had
nothing to do with the crime. After accepting a retainer fee, West confidently
sent back a 30-minute video in which
he methodically explained how the bite
marks in the photos could only have
come from the attorney’s “suspect.”
It was the best evidence to date that
West is a charlatan. And yet Mississippi
prosecutors still defended convictions
won on West’s testimony, and Mississippi judges still upheld them.
In 2002, Kennedy Brewer’s attorneys were finally able to test the DNA
of the semen found in young Christine
Jackson’s body. The tests showed that
the DNA did not belong to Brewer. But