Framed

Autopsy Games#5

By 1995, the Hayne and West team was attracting plenty of attention and not all of it was positive.

Defense lawyers were complaining loudly and reporters were digging through their cases.

They were finding plenty of sensational material.

In a 1991 case, Dr. West testified that by using his incredible ultraviolet light technique, he could match an abrasion on the victim’s body with the shoelaces of the defendant.

He also matched an invisible pattern on the defendant’s palm with the strap of the victim’s purse.

In a rape case, he matched wounds on the victim’s vagina to the defendant’s teeth.

Then, using the West Phenomenon, he also found indentions in the defendant’s hand that matched a screwdriver allegedly used to threaten the victim.

In another case, he matched abdominal bruises to a pair of hiking boots.

In a sensational case, State v. Keko, the victim had been dead, embalmed, and buried for fourteen months before the body was exhumed.

The team of Hayne and West quickly found a bite mark that they, somehow, had missed during the autopsy.

Using his yellow goggles and special ultraviolet light, Dr. West declared the bite mark had been inflicted near the time of death, and had “indeed and without a doubt”

been caused by the teeth of Tony Keko (the defendant).

Defense lawyers successfully argued for a new trial and challenged West’s credentials.

At the time, he was under suspension by the American Board of Pathology.

When the trial judge refused to allow him to testify, the State (Louisiana) dropped the charges and Tony Keko was released.

His wife’s murder was never solved.

And then there was the infamous Bologna Sandwich Case.

In 1993, an elderly woman named Amy Ware was eating a bologna sandwich when someone broke into her house, robbed, and murdered her.

The police found a half-eaten bologna sandwich and froze it.

Her body was taken to Dr. Hayne for an autopsy.

He consulted Dr. West, who, for some reason, didn’t examine the sandwich for several months.

When he finally got around to it, he claimed the teeth marks were consistent with the teeth of the prime suspect, Calvin Banks.

They were inconsistent with those of Amy Ware, the victim. However, Hayne and West got their stories screwed up and West didn’t realize that Hayne, during the autopsy, had found the remains of a half-eaten bologna sandwich in the victim’s stomach.

If she had eaten half the sandwich—the proof was in her stomach—how could the teeth marks on the uneaten portion not belong to her?

Was it plausible that Calvin Banks took a bite or two either before or after he killed her, then left the rest behind? West took photos of the frozen sandwich; then, for some reason, he threw it away.

Forrest Allgood prosecuted Calvin Banks for the murder.

West testified and convinced the jury that the teeth marks in the sandwich belonged to Calvin Banks.

The jury bought it and convicted him.

The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed the legitimacy of bite mark analysis but tossed the conviction because West threw away the sandwich before the defense could examine it.

In 1992, another elderly woman, Georgia Kemp, was found dead by firefighters in her home.

Investigators determined her house had been intentionally set on fire, ostensibly to cover up her murder.

Hayne’s autopsy revealed knife wounds as the cause of death.

He also said she had been raped, though no biological evidence was found.

His report made no mention of bite marks.

Ms. Kemp’s body was embalmed and buried. Suspicion quickly fell upon Eddie Lee Howard, an unemployed man who lived in the general area.

He had a sex offense on his record that made him all the more likely to have committed the crime.

He was arrested on suspicion of murder, but more evidence was needed. So the body was exhumed and sent back to Dr. Hayne for a more thorough examination.

Not surprisingly, he then noticed several bite marks he had somehow missed the first time around. He called in West, who made a dental impression of Howard’s teeth. Voilà! The bite marks were without a doubt made by Howard.

Forrest Allgood prosecuted Eddie Lee Howard for the murder.

At trial, Howard insisted on representing himself, with predictable results.

He was sentenced to death.

The Mississippi Supreme Court again affirmed the use of bite mark analysis but reversed the conviction because Howard had no lawyer.

He had one for his second trial but was found guilty anyway.

Eddie Lee Howard spent twenty-six years on death row before being exonerated by DNA testing in 2020.

The murder was never solved.

—

In spite of reversing the convictions of Calvin Banks and Eddie Lee Howard, the Mississippi Supreme Court has never shown much sympathy for defendants claiming to be victims of questionable forensics.

It affirmed the conviction of Levon Brooks in an 8–1 decision and heartily endorsed bite mark analysis.

It held that such evidence is “universally admissible in Mississippi Courts,”

and said it was as reliable as fingerprints and DNA.

The lone dissenting judge called it unreliable, subjective, and not based on science.

He also blistered Dr. West with a long and thorough summary of a growing list of outrageous claims.

Kennedy Brewer fared no better with the court.

In a unanimous decision, it upheld his conviction and swatted away attacks on West by saying, “The record shows that Dr.

West possessed the knowledge, skill, experience, training, and education necessary to qualify as an expert in forensic odontology.”

Unfortunately, Mississippi, like most states, elects its judges; all of them.

From the lowly justice court judges—untrained jurists not even required to have a high school diploma—to the nine members of its supreme court.

Hardball politics and big money often contaminate the elections, with special interests hiding behind the ever-protective shield of law and order.

During West’s career as an expert witness, the supreme court justices rarely questioned his qualifications and methods.

The lone dissenter in the appeal of Levon Brooks faced a well-financed opponent whose slick television ads labeled him as “the only justice who voted to reverse the conviction of the murderer of a three-year-old girl.”

The dissenter lost by thirty points.

Again and again, the supreme court endorsed the work of Hayne and West and approved one dubious conviction after another.

It seemed oblivious to the growing tide of complaints from defense lawyers, reporters, other experts, and even law enforcement officials.

One outrageous case, though, proved too much for the Mississippi Supreme Court.

In State v. Tyler Edmonds, the defendant was a thirteen-year-old boy being tried as an adult for murder.

Forrest Allgood was once again prosecuting, and, not surprisingly, was again seeking the death penalty.

His star witness was Dr. Hayne, who told the jury that, based on the angle of the bullet’s entry into the stomach of the victim, he was of the opinion that not one, but two people had pulled the trigger of the rifle.

This testimony fit snugly with Allgood’s convoluted theory of the crime.

As usual, Hayne was so slick on the witness stand that the unsophisticated jurors bought his testimony and convicted Tyler Edmonds.

In a rare act of judicial bravery, the supreme court reversed on the grounds that Hayne had obviously stepped beyond his field of expertise.

During the second trial, and without Hayne’s two-hands-on-the-trigger nonsense, the jury acquitted Tyler.

He was released after spending five years in jail.

—

A California lawyer named Christopher Plourd was furious when his innocent client was wrongfully convicted twice for the murder of a cocktail waitress.

The client spent ten years in prison and was almost executed.

The case against him was built solely on the bite mark testimony of a local dentist.

After his client was exonerated, Mr. Plourd decided to expose the quackery.

He and a friend named James Rix, who was not involved in the case, devised a sting operation.

They used the old photos of the alleged bite marks on the victim’s breast, and paid a dentist to make a plaster mold of Rix’s teeth. Mr. Plourd looked around the country at the so-called leading forensic odontologists and, by chance, selected Dr. Michael West.

He called West, fed him a fictitious story, and hired him to consult. He sent West the photos, the mold of Rix’s teeth, and a check for $750.

Two months later, West responded with a letter and a twenty-minute video in which he carefully walked the viewer through his thorough analysis. No doubt the teeth (Rix’s) caused the bite marks.

Though a complete fabrication as part of a sting, the video is astonishing to watch.

West is a confident, polished testifier, and speaks like an expert who’s been through many trials and knows how to relate to laymen.

He explains his analysis in dental and medical terms, and is believable.

It’s easy to see how juries could be convinced he knew what he was talking about.

Mr. Plourd publicized the hoax and tried to bring attention to West and his bogus science.

For a decade afterward, defense lawyers in Mississippi tried in vain to use it to convince judges to prevent West from testifying.

They were not successful.

—

In 2001 Brewer’s lawyers convinced the Mississippi Supreme Court to allow another DNA test.

The results stunned the State.

Kennedy Brewer was excluded as the source.

The semen had been left behind by another man.

His lawyers ran back to the court and insisted that the charges be dropped and their client immediately released.

By then DNA testing was routinely freeing innocent men who had been wrongfully convicted, and in virtually every other case the tests were deemed conclusive of innocence.

Not so in Mississippi.

The court refused to believe Brewer was innocent and said, among other absurdities, that “DNA evidence does not prove conclusively that Brewer did not murder the victim,”

and that there was enough other evidence to indicate Brewer’s involvement.

The only other physical evidence was the bite mark testimony from Dr. West.

Instead of reopening the case and trying to find the killer—the police had hair, blood, and saliva samples from several suspects, including Justin Johnson—Forrest Allgood announced he would retry Kennedy for the rape and murder.

Fifteen years after the crime, and after being cleared by DNA testing, Kennedy would face another trial.

He was hauled from death row at Parchman back to the Noxubee County Jail, where he languished for almost six years as Forrest Allgood delayed a trial.

In 2007, lawyers from the Innocence Project in New York were allowed to do additional testing.

Several boxes of evidence were sent to a lab in California for examination.

The analysts used cheek swabs taken from the Brooks case, one of which was from Justin Johnson, and matched it to the semen taken from Chistine’s body.

Fifteen years after the rape and murder, the crime was finally solved.

The killer was identified as Justin Johnson.

He was arrested and soon confessed to the murder of Christine Jackson.

He led the investigators to the old house where Kennedy and Gloria once lived with her children, showed them the broken window, said he looked in, saw a man and a woman asleep in the bed, saw two girls asleep on the floor, and described how he lifted Christine through the window without waking her.

The police asked if he was involved in an earlier murder, and he admitted killing Courtney Smith.

He remembered driving his car to a pond in the woods, walking to a nearby house, entering through the unlocked front door, walking past a man sleeping on the sofa, finding two little girls asleep in the bedroom, and taking the younger one from the house and into the woods, where he killed her and dumped her body into the pond.

—

Ten days later, Kennedy Brewer entered a packed courtroom and faced the same judge who, thirteen years earlier, had dispatched him to death row with an ominous “May God have mercy on your soul.”

This time, though, the judge simply said, “You’re hereby discharged.

You are free to go.”

No explanation.

No apology.

A month later, Levon Brooks was exonerated in the same courtroom.

Combined, the men spent over thirty years behind bars.

The State paid them each $50,000 a year for time served, but capped it at the maximum of $500,000.

—

Four more years passed before the disgraced authorities in Noxubee County could muster the courage to bring Justin Johnson into the courtroom.

He pled guilty to two counts of capital murder and was given life without parole.

He described how he abducted and killed both girls.

He raped Christine but not Courtney.

—

He did not bite either child.