by Radley Balko
that included Levon Brooks: Brooks trial transcript, 638–640.
“had a bag of money in his hand.”: Ashley Smith, interview by Deputy Sheriff Robert Williams, Sept. 23, 1990.
and ignored the rest: Ibid.
“get children to say anything”: Mason, “‘Just Say No’ for Uncle Bunky.”
“not long ago.”: Justin Albert Johnson, statement, Sept. 23, 1990.
source of the bite: Letter from Michael West to Forrest Allgood, Aug. 16, 1991.
they weren’t human bite marks: See Declaration of Downs; Declaration of David Senn, DDS, Nov. 30, 2011; Declaration of Michael M. Baden, MD, Nov. 30, 2011, Hayne v. Innocence Project. Justin Albert Johnson, interview by Ronnie Odom, Feb. 5, 2008.
no mention of biting the girl: Justin Albert Johnson, interview by Danny Welch, Feb. 5, 7, 2008.
he “exonerates” many more: Jerry Mitchell, “Forensic Dentist Defends Work He’s Done in Autopsies,” Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS), Feb. 28, 2009.
exonerated a dozen people: Ibid.; letter from West to Allgood, Aug. 16, 1991.
“to take the test tomorrow.”: Brooks, statement.
scratches and bruises: “Consent to Search” form, Sept. 25, 1990.
weren’t a match for Brooks’s: Mississippi Crime Lab, Supplementary Report, MCL No. 90-3736.
which were suspended: Levon Brooks, guilty plea document and arrest records, State of Alabama v. Levon Brooks, no. CC-81-20 (April 6, 1981).
stolen from a gas station: Levon Brooks, guilty plea document and arrest records, State of Mississippi v. Levon Brooks, no. 5527 (Noxubee Cnty. Circuit Ct. Sept. 22, 1981).
molds of his teeth: Sources for Brooks arrest narrative: Levon Brooks, guilty plea document and arrest records, State of Alabama v. Levon Brooks; Brooks, guilty plea document and arrest records, State of Mississippi v. Levon Brooks, no. 5527; Statement of Levon Brooks, Sept. 25, 1990; Mississippi Crime Laboratory Certified Laboratory Report, case no. 90-3736, Dec. 16, 1991; letter from West to Allgood, Aug. 16, 1991; letter from West to Harry Alderson, Oct. 18, 1990.
“found on the body of Courtney Smith.”: Letter from West to Alderson.
confirmed by the FBI: Letter from John Hicks to Edward Brennan, Oct. 18, 1990.
“not being number #1 suspect.”: Recognizance Bond, Sept. 28, 1990.
died a broken man: Betty Mickens, interview by Tucker Carrington, 2008.
lost contact with his family: Sources for Mickens/Smith passage: Offense Report for William Dean Mickens, Sept. 19, 1990, signed by Ernest B. Eichelberger; Marion Smith, interview; Betty Mickens, interview.
girls were asleep inside?: Marion Smith, interview; Interim Index Sheet, case #90-3736.
bonded out a few days later: Petition to Enter Plea of Guilty, Sentencing Order, Notice to Commissioner Department of Corrections, no. 12385, May 20, 1992; Victim Impact Statement, Nov. 25, 1991; Criminal Affidavit, June 18, 1991, and Indictment, no. 12385, 12551, Nov. 4, 1991; Arraignment and Guilty Plea, no. 12385, Sept. 12, 1996; Presentence investigation, no. 12551 and 12385, Feb. 10, 1992.
CHAPTER 2: THE MURDER OF CHRISTINE JACKSON
the only game in town: Transcript of record, State of Mississippi v. Kennedy Brewer, No. 94-16-CR1 (Lowndes Cnty. Circuit Ct. March 21, 1995) (hereinafter “Brewer trial transcript”), 409, 411.
check on the children’s welfare: Annie Brewer, interview by Tucker Carrington, 2008.
fed and bathed: Ibid.
in order to get Brewer’s attention: Brewer trial transcript, 541–546.
to watch television: Ibid., 541–547.
before midnight: Ibid., 541–546.
at the foot of the bed: Ibid., 420–432.
already washed downstream: Justin Albert Johnson, interview by Mississippi Law Enforcement, Feb. 7, 2008.
“I’m not a pervert.”: Ibid.
told him to go home: Ibid.
“Christine is missing.”: Annie and Ruby Brewer, interview by Tucker Carrington, 2008.
to help with the search: Annie Brewer, interview.
split mostly along family lines: Ibid.
There was no trace of her: Brewer trial transcript, 28.
on a pallet on the floor: Ibid., 31.
worried about their safety: Ibid., 579.
broken one in the bedroom: Ibid., 35, 576.
lower section was broken: Ibid., 541, 575–579, 620–622.
obvious evidentiary value: Ibid., 573–578.
away from the window: Ibid., 617–619.
tiring in the heat: Ibid., 641–646.
scent from Christine Jackson’s clothes: Ibid., 646.
“we couldn’t see nothing.”: Ibid., 647.
search was called off: Ibid., 647–650.
dogs the day before: Ibid., 594.
floated to the surface: Ibid., 591–592.
sent it to Steven Hayne for an autopsy: Ibid., 628–631.
Christine Jackson’s disappearance: Ibid., 119–120.
it had not: Ibid., 119–120.
Department of Corrections: Ibid., 119–120.
mile from where Christine Jackson lived: André de Gruy, interview by Radley Balko.
any lacerations or bruising: Emergency Room Records for Justin Albert Johnson, James Patrick Clayton, Leshone Williams, and Dwayne Graham, Noxubee General Hospital, May 6, 1992.
he said they were “self-inflicted.”: Emergency Room Record for Justin Albert Johnson, Noxubee General Hospital, May 6, 1992.
clear him of any blame: Brewer trial transcript, 44.
Graham, Williams, and Gloria Jackson: Ibid., 44, 57, 731.
Jackson had been manually strangled: Ibid., 505.
vagina to her rectum: Ibid., 501.
penetration by a “male penis.”: Ibid., 501–505; Report of Post Mortem Examination: Christine Jackson, May 9, 1992.
Christine’s arm, forearm, hand, and fingers: Brewer trial transcript, 494–495; Report of Post Mortem Examination.
about five-eighths of an inch long: Brewer trial transcript, 494–495.
to conduct additional analysis: Ibid., 507–508; Report of Post Mortem Examination.
throughout the autopsy and examination: Letter from Michael West to Diane Brooks, May 14, 1992; Brewer trial transcript, 519–521.
“indeed and without doubt inflicted by Kennedy Brewer.”: Letter from West to Brooks.
six years before he was released: Lowndes County, Mississippi, Notice to Commissioner of the Department of Corrections, no. 12,385 (May 21, 1992). (Note: A clerical error listed the sentence as four years with six suspended.)
announced that he would seek the death penalty: Brewer v. State of Mississippi, 725 So.2d 106 (Miss. 1998).
phrase “indeed and without doubt.”: Letter from West to Brooks.
“the teeth that inflicted the bites.”: Letter from West to Brooks; letter from Dr. Michael West to Forrest Allgood, Sept. 21, 1993; Brewer trial transcript, 782–786.
CHAPTER 3: INVESTIGATING THE DEAD
presented his findings before a public forum: Sources for Caesar assassination narrative: Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, Divus Iulius, in Suetonius, 2 vols., translated by J. C. Rolfe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1920), 1:3–119; Plutarch, The Life of Julius Caesar, in Plutarch’s Lives, vol. 4, translated by John Dryden, edited by A. H. Clough (Boston: Little, Brown, 1906), 323–329; Suzanne Bell, Encyclopedia of Forensic Science, rev. ed. (New York: Facts on File, 2008), 22; Barry Strauss, The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016), 39–141.
the Qin Dynasty of the third century BCE: Anthony Barbieri-Low, “Model Legal and Administrative Forms from the Qin, Han, and Tang and Their Role in the Facilitation of Bureaucracy and Literacy,” Oriens Extremus 50 (2011): 125–156; Anthony Barbieri-Low and Robin D. S. Yates, Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China: A Study with Critical Edition and Translation of the Legal Texts from Zhangjiashan Tomb No. 247 (Leiden: Brill, 2015); “The First Mon
ographic Works on Forensic Medicine—Xiyuan Jilu,” China Culture, Aug. 2005, http://en.chinaculture.org/created/2005-08/01/content_71484_2.htm.
separate and independent investigation: P. Saukko and S. Pollack, “Autopsy: Procedures and Standards,” in Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine, edited by Jason Payne-James and Roger W. Byard (Boston: Elsevier Academic, 2015), 304–410.
the first forensics manual ever published: Sung Tz’u, The Washing Away of Wrongs, translated by Brian E. McKnight (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies, 1981).
the sickle’s owner confessed: Richard S. Michelson, “History of Forensics,” chapter 2 in Crime Scene Investigation: An Introduction to CSI (San Clemente, CA: LawTech Publishing Group, 2015); Sung Tz’u, The Washing Away of Wrongs, 69–70.
feature of most criminal investigations: Werner U. Spitz and Daniel J. Spitz, eds., Spitz and Fisher’s Medicolegal Investigation of Death: Guidelines for the Application of Pathology to Crime Investigation (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 2006), 4.
testified in criminal courts: Ibid., 5–6.
an advisor to King Richard I: Some historians have pointed out that there are records of a “crowner” office in some parts of England prior to 1194, but it was likely an official with much different responsibilities. Clifton D. Bryant and Dennis L. Peck, eds., Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2009), 226.
“treasure troves.”: Sources for the narrative of English coroner history: Bernard Knight, “Origins of the Office of the Coroner,” “The Medieval Coroner’s Duties,” “The Coroner’s Inquest,” “The Right of Sanctuary,” “Trial by Ordeal, Injuries Outlaws,” and “Treasure Trove & Shipwrecks,” Britannia History, www.britannia.com/history/coroner1.html; R. F. Hunnisett, The Medieval Coroner (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1961); Bryant and Peck, eds., Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience, 226; Henry William Carless Davis, England Under the Normans and Angevins: 1066–1272 (London: Methuen, 1905), 324–326; Cecil Greek, “Drug Control and Asset Seizures: A Review of the History of Forfeiture in England and Colonial America,” in Drugs, Crime, and Social Policy: Research, Issues, and Concerns, edited by Thomas Mieczkowski (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1992), 109–137; “History,” The Coroners Society of England & Wales, www.coronersociety.org.uk/history; Coroners and Justice Act, 2009, chapter 25 (United Kingdom); Rudolph Eyre Melsheimer and Sir John Jervis, The Coroners Act, 1887: With Forms and Precedents (H. Sweet & Sons, 1888).
a tradition that persists today: See Indiana, for example, where in 2010 Hancock County sheriff C. K. “Bud” Gray was arrested for embezzlement by the coroner, “the only local official who can arrest a sitting sheriff.” Richard Essex, “Hancock Co. Sheriff Arrested, Jailed,” WTHR Eyewitness News, Aug. 6, 2010, www.wthr.com/article/hancock-co-sheriff-arrested-jailed. In Mississippi, however, multiple officials are permitted to arrest the sheriff. See MS Code Section 19-25-11.
to reach their conclusions: Jeffrey M. Jentzen, Death Investigation in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 9.
“demanded of potential coroners.”: Julie Johnson-McGrath, “Coroners, Corruption, and the Politics of Death,” in Legal Medicine in History, edited by Michael Clark and Catherine Crawford (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 268–288.
entree into political life: Jentzen, Death Investigation in America, 18.
modern forensic pathology: Ibid., 16.
advocated abolishing of the coroner’s office: Ibid., 36–37.
steered clear of the criminal justice system: Ibid., 67–70.
loot personal belongings from corpses: Ibid., 16, 23–30; Johnson-McGrath, “Coroners, Corruption, and the Politics of Death.”
save a fortune in claims: Jentzen, Death Investigation in America, 26.
“physician would care to join.”: Johnson-McGrath, “Coroners, Corruption, and the Politics of Death,” 277.
Jennings was hanged: People v. Jennings, 96 N.E. 1077 (1911); Jessica M. Sombat, “Latent Justice: Daubert’s Impact on the Evaluation of Fingerprint Identification Testimony,” Fordham Law Review 70, no. 6 (2002): 2819–2868; Richard C. Lindberg, To Serve and Collect: Chicago Politics and Police Corruption from the Lager Beer Riot to the Summerdale Scandal (New York: Praeger, 1991), 79–80.
relative ratios of various body parts: Greg Allen, “‘Living Exhibits’ at 1904 World’s Fair Revisited,” National Public Radio, May 31, 2005; “Interview with Robert Rydell,” Public Broadcasting Service, 2003, www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-11.htm; Jose D. Fermin, 1904 World’s Fair: The Filipino Experience (Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2006); Peter Komarinski, Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) (Boston: Elsevier Academic, 2005).
he coined the term: Sources for Galton narrative: “Bertillon System of Criminal Identification,” National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, Nov. 2011, www.nleomf.org/museum/news/newsletters/online-insider/november-2011/bertillon-system-criminal-identification.html; Sir Francis Galton, Memories of My Life (London: Methuen, 1908), 311; “Origins of Eugenics: From Sir Francis Galton to Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924,” Historical Collections at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library; Peter Komarinski, Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) (Boston: Elsevier Academic, 2005), 39–33. See also Galton biography, history, and collection of works and personal correspondence at http://galton.org.
a focus on nascent forensic science: William J. Tilstone, Kathleen A. Savage, and Leigh A. Clark, Forensic Science: An Encyclopedia of History, Methods, and Techniques (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), 17–21. See also Samuel J. Walker, Popular Justice: A History of American Criminal Justice, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 112–144.
“witnesses were actually claiming.”: Jonathan Koehler, interview by Radley Balko.
reformers all over the country: “Norris Succeeds Riordan,” New York Times, Feb. 1, 1918.
followed in the next decade: Jentzen, Death Investigation in America, 23.
deaths from accidents and negligence: Ibid., 138–141.
only made things worse: Ibid., 24.
qualified forensic pathologists: Ibid., 33–40.
any meaningful legal reform: Ibid., 45.
Childs’s model policies: Sources for Richard Childs narrative: Ibid., 54–70; Bernard Hirschhorn, “Richard Spencer Childs (1882–1978): His Role in Modernization of Medicolegal Investigation in America,” American Journal of Forensic Pathology (Sept. 1983).
a formidable lobby: Jentzen, Death Investigation in America, 61.
“particular field in which it belongs.”: Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1923).
“content of a witness’s testimony.”: Jonathan Koehler, interview by Radley Balko; see Alan W. Tamarelli, “Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals: Pushing the Limits of Scientific Reliability—The Questionable Wisdom of Abandoning the Peer Review Standard for Admitting Expert Testimony,” Vanderbilt Law Review 47 (1994): 1175–1203.
entirely different ways of thinking: Jonathan Koehler and Michael Saks, interviews by Radley Balko; Jentzen, Death Investigation in America, 24.
class of candidates was certified in 1959: W. G. Eckert, “The Forensic Pathology Specialty Certifications,” American Journal of Forensic and Medical Pathology (March 1988).
for the position at all: “Coroner Training Requirements,” Center for Disease Control, updated Oct. 26, 2016, www.cdc.gov/phlp/publications/coroner/training.html.
CHAPTER 4: AT THE HANDS OF PERSONS UNKNOWN
“to the jury is rendered”: Ida B. Wells, “Lynch Law,” from “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Not in the World’s Columbian Exposition,” 1893, http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/wells/exposition/exposition.html.
“to keep down public clamor.”: “Inaccurate Reports on Lynchings,” Afro-American (Baltimore, MD), Jan. 7, 1932.
already illegal under state law: Robert Siegel, “Anti-Lynchi
ng Law in U.S. History,” National Public Radio, June 13, 2005.
“‘party or parties unknown.’”: Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 212.
publications like the Chicago Defender: Ethan Michaeli, “‘Bound for the Promised Land,’” Atlantic, Jan. 11, 2016.
“at the hands of persons unknown.”: See, for example, Report of the NAACP for the Years 1917 and 1918 (1919); “Lynching, Whites and Negroes—1882–1968,” Tuskegee University Archives, http://archive.tuskegee.edu/archive/bitstream/handle/123456789/511/Lyching%201882%201968.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
history of lynching in America: See Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (New York: Modern Library, 2003).
or pieces of the rope used for the hanging: Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 30; see also James Allen, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms, 2010).
“rope that strung him up, too.”: Anna Bard Brutzman, “100 Years Later, Notorious Honea Path Lynching Remembered,” Independent Mail (Anderson, SC), Oct. 9, 2011.
“a party to help lynch the brute.”: Tolnay and Beck, A Festival of Violence, 26, quoting the Crisis, Dec. 1911, 56.
Willis Jackson died “at the hands of parties unknown.”: Brutzman, “100 Years Later.”
rendering the crime unsolvable: Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, 226–229.
“not conducting his own investigation”: William Wilbanks, Forgotten Heroes: Police Officers Killed in Dade County, 1895–1995 (Paducah, KY: Turner, 1996), 30.
the president of the United States himself: See Laura Wexler, Fire in a Canebrake (New York: Scribner, 2004); Kathy Lohr, “FBI Re-Examines 1946 Lynching Case,” National Public Radio, July 25, 2006.
“The Best People Won’t Talk.”: “The Best People Won’t Talk,” Time, Aug. 5, 1946; Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, 382.