Bad coroner to be stopped from performing Mississippi autopsies

Mississippi coroner Steven Hayne, whose incompetent and dishonest work has been exposed in numerous articles by Radley Balko at The Agitator, will be cut off from future work--but only after he completes a backlog of 400-500 autopsies in the next 90 days. That's more than double the number of annual autopsies per year per coroner according to the National Association of Medical Examiners, and he's typically done 1,500 per year. The NAME says a coroner shouldn't do more than 250 a year, and will not certify any coroner who does over 350 a year.

Balko points out how inept and dishonest Mississippi's government and newspapers have been in dealing with Hayne.

Mississippi is not a state I ever want to visit, let alone live in.

UPDATE (September 7, 2008): Radley Balko has tracked down a file of complaints about Hayne going back to the early nineties which shows, among other things, that the government in Mississippi was well aware of what Hayne was doing, and used him because he gave them the results they wanted.

UPDATE (September 10, 2008): Balko has an update to his September 7 post that corrects a statement about Dr. Emily Ward, Mississippi's last official state medical examiner.