DOUBT
now works for another state medical
examiner’s office, told me in 2007 that
when he tried to start bidding for autopsy contracts in Mississippi in the 1990s,
he was told by a county coroner that he’d
first need to get permission from Hayne.
That was odd, given that Hayne held no
official state position.
When Emily Ward, Mississippi’s previous state medical examiner, began to
question Hayne’s practices and credentials in 1993, West circulated a petition
among the state’s coroners and prosecutors demanding Ward’s resignation. It
worked. Ward, who was board-certified
and well-respected among her peers,
was forced out of office. Her predecessor
Lloyd White also encountered pushback
for attempting to provide some oversight
to Hayne. After Ward, the state didn’t
hire another official medical examiner for
15 years — essentially giving Hayne and
West free rein.
In a recent New York Times article on
Hayne, former prosecutor and judge John
T. Kitchens said, “from a prosecutor’s
standpoint I don’t know anybody who
didn’t like him. He was always so helpful and useful to law enforcement.” Leroy
Riddick, a former state medical examiner
for Alabama told me in 2007, “All of the
prosecutors in Mississippi know that if
you want to be sure you get the autopsy
results you want, you take the body to
Dr. Hayne.” Critics say that this is pre-
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cisely the problem. Medical examiners
should be impartial witnesses, not part
of the prosecution’s “team.”
Carrington says Mabry’s case shows
exactly why the state needs to conduct a
thorough, soup-to-nuts investigation of
Hayne and West. “I can’t think of a single
case in which West has testified where
we didn’t find a problem.” He adds that
in cases where West has testified in court
there is usually a record, so his name will
at least turn up in legal searches. But
in cases like Mabry’s — and likely many
others — there’s no such record.
“It was just fortuitous that we found
this case,” Carrington says. Gates’ attorney fought the murder charge, but Carrington says that the case easily could
have gone another way. “Gates’ attorney
could well have told him, ‘Look, they’ve
got you dead to rights. Plead guilty and
maybe they’ll go easy on you,” he says.
“Innocent people can often find themselves in that predicament. If he had
plead guilty, there’d be no record of
West’s role in the conviction. How many
other cases like this are out there?”
Winter, of the association of police
chiefs, agrees. “I’ve been telling Jim
Hood for years that this calls for that
kind of investigation into Steven Hayne
and Michael West,” he says. “At the
very least, we need a bona-fide cold case
unit that looks for cases like this. And
it needs to be done by people with some
integrity, people who are willing to look
for open murders, but who will also look
for cases where an innocent person may