Review
"Of all the tragedy documented in this book, surely the most pernicious is the unacknowledged progression of discriminatory policies in the American criminal justice system. The black men at the story's center were not snatched out of a Mississippi jail and lynched. They were falsely imprisoned. They were haunted by state efforts to execute them for three decades. This is a powerful and instructive story, masterfully told by Balko and Carrington."―Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
"The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist paints a devastating picture of Mississippi's ongoing systemic abuse of junk evidence by medical examiners and highlights the myriad ways the current legal and political systems reward certain and speedy convictions. This carefully constructed and highly-readable account also reveals the ways in which catastrophic and almost comic expert errors can lead to hasty conclusions, ruined lives, and may take years to correct, if they are corrected at all."―Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Editor, Slate
"If, like most Americans, you think that our legal system protects innocent people from being falsely convicted, be prepared to have your faith shattered. In horrifying detail, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington show how structural racism, junk science, overzealous prosecutors, compliant judges, and a bloodthirsty press conspired to wreck lives and convict the innocent. Grounded in Mississippi courtrooms, but with national implications, this book will leave you outraged and hungry for change."―James Forman, Jr., Professor, Yale Law School and author of Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
"A haunting true-crime tale of systemic incompetence and racism...Balko and Carrington have written a cry for help."―The New York Times
"A superb work of investigative reporting....Balko and Carrington combine expertise, industry and outrage into a searing narrative."―Wall Street Journal
"A horrifying exposé of how a few individuals can infect an entire state's criminal justice system."―Kirkus Reviews, *Starred Review*
"A clear and shocking portrait of the structural failings of the U.S. criminal justice system... This eminently readable book builds a hard-to-ignore case for comprehensive criminal justice reform."―Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review*
"Through the intensive scrutiny of how the men were speedily tried, convicted, and then released after years in prison, the authors uncover an unholy alliance of racist cops and prosecutors with questionable death investigations and misapplied forensics. This work should spark both admiration and outrage-and, one hopes, reform."―Booklist
About the Author
Radley Balko is an investigative journalist and reporter at the
Washington Post. He currently writes and edits The Watch, a reported opinion blog that covers civil liberties and the criminal justice system. He is the author of the 2013 book
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, which has won widespread acclaim, including from the
Economist, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, and
Publishers Weekly, and was named one of the best investigative journalism books of the year by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. Since 2006, Balko has written dozens of pieces on Hayne, West, and Mississippi's forensics disaster. His January 2013 investigation, "Solving Kathy Mabry's Murder: Brutal 15-Year-Old Crime Highlights Decades-Long Mississippi Scandal," was one of the most widely read
Huffington Post articles of 2013. In 2015, Balko was awarded the Innocence Project's Journalism Award, in part for his coverage in Mississippi.
Tucker Carrington is the director of the George C. Cochran Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi School of Law. He has worked as a criminal defense lawyer for his entire legal career, most of it as a public defender in Washington, D.C.
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