Death Row Inmate Freed After Bullshit Bite Mark Evidence Determined To Be Bullshit

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The end of a crooked and corrupt era in Mississippi is still paying long-belated dividends to wrongly convicted criminals in Mississippi. The state that has defined "backwater" for so many years is slowly crawling out of its self-created gutter.Eddie Lee Howard has been freed. And it took "only" 26 years. Howard was convicted of murdering Georgia Kemp back in 1995. He was 38 at the time he was arrested. He is now 67. And he is being freed.The case was built on the testimony of two supposed experts, an overworked (and underqualified) coroner (Dr. Steven Hayne) and Dr. Michael West, a self-avowed "bite mark expert." In reality, state medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne was just another cog in the conviction wheel -- a coroner who somehow managed to perform more than six autopsies a day.Radley Balko -- a longtime police accountability advocate -- has written a book about both of these men: "The Cadaver King and the County Dentist." Hayne only got his position because no one else stepped up to fill it. He certainly didn't have the credentials.

Hayne had wanted that job but was barred by his lack of certification. Instead, Mississippi officials simply left the office vacant, allowing Hayne to become the state’s de facto medical examiner, even though he wasn’t qualified to hold the title.

During the State’s cross-examination of Dr. Hayne, the prosecutor asked Dr. Hayne: “You told me during lunch the reason you have to carry around that big notebook with you is you have to defend yourself nowadays for all the reversals you’ve had in the Mississippi Supreme Court; is that correct?” Rayner objected to the relevancy and improper questioning of Dr. Hayne; however, the trial court overruled the objection, finding that the question related to Dr. Hayne’s credibility, and allowed the prosecutor to proceed with his line of cross-examination questioning.After presenting his case to the jury, Rayner renewed all of his previous motions, especially for a directed verdict/judgment of acquittal. The trial court overruled Rayner’s motions. During closing arguments, the State, on rebuttal, made the following comment: “Then you go to Dr. Hayne, a discredited doctor in the State of Mississippi.”

West examined the body, using ultraviolet light and “special glasses” to discover bite marks deemed invisible to the naked human eye, and therefore missed on the autopsy report, on three parts of the victim’s body.

Two men [were] convicted of raping and killing two 3-year-old girls in separate Mississippi crimes in 1992 and 1995. Marks on their bodies were later determined to have come from crawfish and insects.

“Dr. West’s credibility also has been destroyed since Howard’s trial. In the intervening years, West and his methodology have plunged to overwhelming rejection by the forensics community to the point that today his methodology is not at all supported by mainstream forensic odontologists,” Associate Justice David Ishee wrote in a concurring option for the court.

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New York Court Reminds Native American Tribe That Suing For Libel Isn't An Option For Government Agencies

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We give government agencies a whole lot of power. That's the way the government works: we, the people, allow agencies to perform their duties with minimal interference and, in exchange, we theoretically benefit from these services we pay for indirectly.To perform their duties, agencies need a bit of runway. Discretion is theirs alone. We can hope to force external change, but internally, agencies operate without direct oversight from the people funding them. And when it comes to litigation, government agencies can usually dodge lawsuits, thanks to multiple levels of immunity. Qualified immunity shields public servants from accountability. Absolute immunity shields pretty much everything else.But there's a flipside, one we don't see all that often. The government can dodge a lot of accountability, thanks to its immunity stacks. On the other hand, it can't easily engage in litigation against the citizens signing its paychecks, thanks to Constitutional, judicial, and legislative protections.The government can only do so much when it feels besmirched. And it definitely can't do this sort of thing. Government officials can sue in their personal capacity. But they can't sue as a cohesive whole. That's the uptake from a short decision entered against a Native American tribe that decided to sue TV producers over some fictional stuff that happened in a fictional TV show. (via the Volokh Conspiracy)The Cayuga Nation -- a federally recognized Native American tribe that possesses land in New York, Oklahoma, and Ontario, Canada -- sued over its depiction in the Showtime series, Billions. In one episode, the Cayuga tribe was depicted as engaging in an illegal land deal -- one that involved bribery and blackmail.The tribe sued, claiming it had been defamed. But the court [PDF] handling the case points out the tribe is a governmental agency and, therefore, cannot engage in libel lawsuits. The First Amendment forbids this sort of government action, even if the government agency pursuing the claim operates outside of the federal government's purview.

Contrary to Cayuga Nation's contention, First Amendment principles are applicable to cases involving libel claims arising from fictional works of entertainment (see e.g. Gravano v Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., 142 AD3d 776 [1st Dept 2016], affd 31 NY3d 988 [2018]; Batra v Wolf, 2008 NY Slip Op 30821[U] [Sup Ct, NY County, Mar. 14, 2008]). Supreme Court reasonably rejected plaintiffs' conclusory contention that the episode referred to plaintiff Halftown individually, and the episode can reasonably be said to concern how the Cayuga Nation "governs," as it depicts the Nation's involvement in a land deal and its decision to support a particular character in connection with a mobile voting program that he seeks to implement. While plaintiffs argue that Native American tribes are a unique kind of government entity, they do not explain how that uniqueness bears on the libel analysis at issue.

For good reason, "no court of last resort in this country has ever held, or even suggested, that prosecutions for libel on government have any place in the American system of jurisprudence."

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