Mississippi cuts ties with rogue medical examiner


For two decades, discredited Mississippi medical examiner Steven Hayne has conducted 80% of Mississippi’s autopsies with scant oversight. Today, his unethical and destructive practices were stopped by Mississippi officials, who severed ties with Hayne and gave him 90 days to complete the staggering 400-500 autopsy reports he has outstanding.

For years, Hayne has apparently earned over $1 million by conducting in excess of 1,500 autopsies a year, more than five times the amount recommended by professional organizations. He is not properly board certified and his work has been seriously questioned in a number of cases.

Hayne’s forensic misconduct contributed to the convictions of Innocence Project clients Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, who were imprisoned in the early 1990s for eerily similar murders they didn’t commit. This year, both men were exonerated after new DNA results from Brewer’s case pointed to the identity of the man who committed both crimes. They had each served 15 years in prison; Brewer was on death row for most of that time.

In the aftermath of Brewer and Brooks’ exonerations, the Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project pressed the state to limit Hayne’s autopsies, review other cases he worked on to identify potential wrongful convictions, and bring much-needed oversight to the system. Today, the state’s Public Safety Commissioner announced that Hayne has conducted his last criminal autopsy in Mississippi and that officials are actively working to fill a critical oversight position.

The Innocence Project said Mississippi officials are moving in the right direction, but Co-Director Peter Neufeld said further steps are necessary to ensure that investigations can continue into Hayne’s 20-year history on thousands of cases.

“This is a huge first step. This will fundamentally change the landscape in Mississippi death investigation, which for 20 years has been tainted by Steven Hayne’s misconduct and shoddy work. While this is an important beginning, there are other steps the state needs to take,” Neufeld said. “The Department of Public Safety has given Steve Hayne 90 days to compile pending autopsy reports and turn them over to the state. The state should also have him submit a detailed list of all cases he has handled in Mississippi over the last 20 years, along with documentation from those cases, and the state should take immediate action to prevent any documents on Hayne’s work from being destroyed.”

Read more about today’s breaking news here.

The Innocence Project — Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
100 Fifth Ave. 3rd Floor - New York, NY 10011
www.innocenceproject.org