The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South

A shocking and deeply reported account of the persistent plague of institutional racism and junk forensic science in our criminal justice system, and its devastating effect on innocent lives After two 3-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement pursued and convicted two innocent men: Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks.

Together they spent a combined 30 years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008.

Meanwhile, the real killer remained free.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist recounts the story of how the criminal justice system allowed this to happen, and of how two men, Dr.

Steven Hayne and Dr.

Michael West, built successful careers on the back of that structure.

For nearly two decades, Hayne, a medical examiner, performed the vast majority of Mississippi' s autopsies, while his friend Dr.

West, a local dentist, pitched himself as a forensic jack-of-all-trades.

Together they became the go-to experts for prosecutors and helped put countless Mississippians in prison.

But then some of those convictions began to fall apart.