Mississippi's medical forensic fraudsters

Radley Balko at Reason magazine exposes video that shows Michael West in the act of falsifying evidence used to frame someone for rape and murder, by using plaster casts of the accused's teeth to make bite marks on a toddler's corpse.

This is one of three cases in which Michael West and Steven Hayne provided evidence in the form of bite marks on a body to link a murder victim to an accused rapist and murderer--and in the other two cases, the alleged killers were subsequently freed when exonerated by DNA evidence which linked the cases to the actual murderer, who confessed when they were released.

West and Hayne belong in jail, as does the judge who claimed that the referenced video contained "no exculpatory evidence favorable to the defendant."

Hayne performed over 80% of Mississippi's autopsies for the last 20 years, and was permitted to complete a backlog of 600 autopsies even after he was terminated as the state's coroner as a result of Balko's exposure of other misconduct. This misconduct and the state's failure to hold them accountable brings every criminal case they've ever touched into question.

(Previously on Hayne.)