Murders Around Mississippi

--Performed Cleve McDowell's Autopsy: Where were the bullets?
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Innocence Project Asks State Board to Revoke Steven Hayne’s Medical License Based on Repeated Autopsy Misconduct

1,000-page formal allegation with Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure seeks to stop Hayne from conducting autopsies and practicing medicine

(JACKSON, MS; April 8, 2008) – Based on evidence that Steven Hayne, who conducts 80% of autopsies in Mississippi, has committed fraud and misconduct that sent an unknown number of innocent people to prison, the Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project today filed a formal allegation to revoke his license to practice medicine in Mississippi.

The allegation filed today with the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure outlines several violations – spanning two decades – of the Mississippi state law that regulates medical practice. Hayne’s practices have been questioned for several years and have come under increasing scrutiny after two men – Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both of Noxubee County, Mississippi – were exonerated this year, 15 years after Hayne’s testimony helped convict them of capital crimes they did not commit.

If the State Board of Medical Licensure revokes Hayne’s medical license, he will not be able to conduct any autopsies for law enforcement in Mississippi or practice medicine in any other context in the state. Under the law, a doctor’s medical license is revoked if he or she engages in “incompetent professional practice, unprofessional conduct, [and] other dishonorable or unethical conduct that is likely to deceive, defraud, or harm the public.” The law also requires doctors to be “honest in all professional interactions including his or her medical expert activities” and directs medical experts “not [to] make or use any false, fraudulent, or forged statement or document.”

“Steven Hayne’s long history of misconduct, incompetence and fraud has sent truly innocent people to death row or to prison for life. This is precisely why regulations are in place to revoke medical licenses. Steven Hayne should never practice medicine in Mississippi again, and the complaint we filed today is an important step toward restoring integrity in forensic science statewide – and restoring confidence in the state’s criminal justice system,” said Peter Neufeld, Co-Director of the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is a national organization affiliated with Cardozo School of Law; the Mississippi Innocence Project is based at the University of Mississippi School of Law.

The allegation filed today with the Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure includes a 14-page summary letter and 1,000 pages of supporting documents, including trial transcripts and autopsy reports from several cases. The allegations that merit revoking Hayne’s medical license include:

Hayne misrepresents his credentials, claiming under oath to be the “chief state pathologist for the Department of Public Safety” (a position that does not exist) and claiming under oath to be “board-certified” in “forensic pathology” (when in fact he is not properly board-certified in forensic pathology). Papers filed with the Board today include several transcripts of testimony where Hayne has made these false claims.

Hayne testified falsely in Levon Brooks’ trial, leading to his wrongful conviction and sentence of life in prison without parole. The victim in the case had marks on her body, and the prosecution’s central theory of the crime was that they were human bite marks inflicted before the victim died. Hayne testified that marks on the victim’s hand in the case occurred prior to her death – a conclusion that is “simply wrong,” according to the allegation, and has no scientific basis.

Hayne testified falsely in Kennedy Brewer’s trial, leading to his wrongful conviction and death sentence. Just as it was in Brooks’ case, Hayne’s motive was to falsely claim that marks on the child’s body were inflicted by the assailant before she died. Even though the marks clearly were caused after the victim died, Hayne’s false assertion would support the prosecution’s central theory of the case. Hayne claimed in the autopsy report that he took biopsies from the so-called bite marks (to determine whether they occurred prior to her death), but testified at Brewer’s trial that he didn’t take biopsies of the marks. The most logical conclusion is that Hayne realized the biopsies would not support the false theory that the marks occurred before the victim’s death, so Hayne improperly stopped analyzing them. Hayne also testified in Brewer’s trial that the marks were caused by human teeth, rather than the expected decomposition or insect activity that regularly occurs after death. There was no scientific basis for Hayne’s testimony.

Hayne testified falsely in Tyler Edmonds’ trial, leading to his conviction and death sentence. Hayne claimed that he could tell from a bullet wound in the victim’s head that it was more likely that two people (rather than one person) had fired the fatal shot together. The Mississippi Supreme Court found Hayne’s testimony in the case “scientifically unfounded” and noted that his conclusion was not based on scientific methods or procedures.

Hayne issued an autopsy report – with no medical or scientific basis – supporting the prosecution case against Tina Funderburk, who is being charged with her daughter’s murder. An expert who Hayne himself brought into the case said the cause and manner of death could not be determined, but Hayne nevertheless examined the meager skeletal remains and said the child died from compression of the head and suffocation.

In four other cases, Hayne may have made false findings and potentially testified falsely under oath. In two of those cases, Hayne examined skeletons and said he could tell that the victims were strangled (even though the skeletons had no muscles). In another one of the cases, Hayne claimed in an autopsy report that he examined organs – when in fact it appeared the organs had not been touched.

“We have only presented the tip of the iceberg to the State Board of Medical Licensure, but this evidence shows Steven Hayne’s unprofessional, dishonorable and unethical conduct that has deceived, defrauded and harmed the public,” said W. Tucker Carrington, Director of the Mississippi Innocence Project.

The complaint filed today says, “We believe the conduct in this complaint alone is sufficient to justify immediate revocation of Dr. Hayne’s license … His work compromises the accuracy and integrity of medicine and criminal justice throughout the state. We urge you to put an end to his misconduct through an expeditious, thorough investigation of his work and revocation of his license.”

The Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project continue asking the state’s Commissioner of Public Safety to appoint and help secure funding for a State Medical Examiner. The State Legislature created the position in the 1980s to provide assistance and oversight for medical examiners across the state. The position has been vacant for over a decade, leaving no oversight of Hayne’s autopsies and no system for training and recruiting qualified pathologists to conduct autopsies in Mississippi.

For the summary letter of today’s allegation, go to: http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Letter_to_Medical_Board.pdf

For more on the Brewer and Brooks cases, go to: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/1175.php

For the letter from the Innocence Project and the Mississippi Innocence Project to the Commissioner of Public Safety, urging him to fill and help fund the State Medical Examiner position, go to: http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/1173.php

For an op-ed earlier this month from a former Commissioner of Public Safety, calling on officials to fill and fund the State Medical Examiner position, go to: http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080330/OPINION/803300302/1046

For more background on Steven Hayne, see “CSI Mississippi,” a Reason Magazine investigative report by Senior Editor Radley Balko, at http://www.reason.com/news/show/122458.html.

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Eric Ferrero
Director of Communications
The Innocence Project
Office: 212-364-5346
Cell: 646-342-9310
100 Fifth Ave., 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10011
www.innocenceproject.org

MORE on Hayne ... Reason Magazine, November 2007

In a remarkable capital murder case earlier this year, the Mississippi Supreme Court, by an 8-to-1 vote, tossed out the expert testimony of Steven Hayne. The defendant was Tyler Edmonds, a 13-year-old boy accused of killing his sister’s husband. Hayne, Mississippi’s quasi-official state medical examiner, had testified that the victim’s bullet wounds supported the prosecution’s theory that Edmonds and his sister had shot the man together, each putting a hand on the weapon and pulling the trigger at the same time.

“I would favor that a second party be involved in that positioning of the weapon,” Hayne told the jury. “It would be consistent with two people involved. I can’t exclude one, but I think that would be less likely.”

Testifying that you can tell from an autopsy how many hands were on the gun that fired a bullet is like saying you can tell the color of a killer’s eyes from a series of stab wounds. It’s absurd. The Mississippi Supreme Court said Hayne’s testimony was “scientifically unfounded” and should not have been admitted. Based on this and other errors, it ordered a new trial for Edmonds.

MORE on Hayne ... Reason Magazine, November 2007

Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights, Cleve McDowelll, cold cases, James Ford Seale, Mississippi

Reward offered in 1964 slaying; efforts to find Louis Allen's killer increase after solving other cold cases

Family members of Louis Allen, a Liberty resident shot to death 43 years ago in what the FBI is investigating as a civil rights-era slaying, are offering $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of his killers.

Allen's namesake grandson, Louis Allen Jr., said family members suspect the killer is alive and that other people were involved.

The Allen case is one of more than 100 civil rights-era slaying under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Louis Allen Jr. said he hopes the reward offered by the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference will spark more interest in finding justice for his grandfather.

Efforts to solve the case have gained steam, following prosecutions in other civil rights-era cold cases, including two life sentences handed down this summer to James Ford Seale of Roxie in the May 2, 1964, kidnapping of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. The teens were beaten and drowned.

Story Continued --

Labels: Birdia Keglar, Charles Eddie Moore, Clinton Melton, cold cases, David Halberstam, Emmett Till, Herbert Lee, James Ford Seale, Louis Allen, Mississippi murders

Once a SNCC volunteer protester, U. S. Rep. John Lewis is carried away by police




Wednesday, September 5, 2007, 02:23 PM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

U.S. Rep. John Lewis went before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, tying the disarray in the U.S. Justice Department to Georgia’s voter ID law.

Here’s the gist of his printed remarks:

“During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, we knew that individuals in the Department of Justice were people who we could call any time of day or night….

“And we felt during those years that the civil rights division of the Department of Justice was more than a sympathetic referee, it was on the side of justice, on the side of fairness.

“During the movement, people looked to Washington for justice, for fairness, but today I’m not so sure that the great majority of individuals in the civil rights community can look to the division for that fairness…

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Labels: Birdia Keglar, Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, cold cases, Goodman, Gordon Lackey, Henry Dee, Henry Hezekiah Dee, James Ford Seale, John Lewis, KKK

Former KKK man found guilty of kidnappings
By Matt Saldana in Jackson, Mississippi
June 15, 2007 11:32am

A FORMER Ku Klux Klansman was found guilty of kidnapping today in the 1964 deaths of two black men in Mississippi, a case that highlighted white supremacist violence during the civil rights era.

A jury deliberated just two hours before convicting James Seale, who was also charged with conspiracy in the killings of 19-year-olds Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore.

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Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights, cold cases, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Homochitto National Forest, James Ford Seale, KKK, lynch, Mississippi

The Associated Press reports that attorneys for a reputed Ku Klux Klansman concluded their case Wednesday in Jackson, Miss. without his testimony on kidnapping and conspiracy charges in the 1964 deaths of two black Mississippi teenagers.

Witnesses called on behalf of James Ford Seale, 71, included his younger brother and an Alabama forensic pathologist who testified he studied autopsy reports on the two young men but could not draw any conclusions about how they died.

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Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights, cold cases, FBI, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Homochitto National Forest, James Ford Seale, KKK, Mississippi murders

PETER HARDIN
TIMES-DISPATCH WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT
reports ...

WASHINGTON -- Widows of two civil-rights activists slain in the 1960s appealed to Congress yesterday to help bring justice in scores of cold murder cases from that era.

To do so, Myrlie Evers-Williams said, would aid surviving families and tell the nation "that these people's lives were not in vain." She testified on the 44th anniversary of the assassination in Mississippi of her husband, Medgar Evers.

Further prosecutions could help the nation understand its history better in order to heal deep wounds and achieve reconciliation, added Rita Schwerner Bender. Her husband, Michael Schwerner, was killed in Mississippi in 1964.

A House subcommittee unanimously approved a bill to authorize spending $13.5 million a year over 10 years for reopening the cases that have gone cold. Of that, $11.5 million would go to the Justice Department and the remainder to help state and local authorities.

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Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights movement, cold cases, FBI, Goodman, Henry Dee, Henry Hezekiah Dee, James Chaney, James Ford Seale, Jimmy Lee Jackson, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Medgar Evers

From the Associated Press ..

JACKSON, Miss. --Opening arguments are set to start Monday afternoon in the federal trial of reputed Klansman James Ford Seale, who's charged with kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 slayings of two black teenagers in southwest Mississippi.

The third day of jury selection stretched late into Friday night and the pool of potential jurors was narrowed to 34 people from across the southern half of Mississippi.

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Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, Charles Moore, civil rights, cold cases, James Ford Seale

This news just in about the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice. Will cold cases be taken more seriously?

For some former career staff in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman's face-off with the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee this week couldn't have come soon enough.

"I'm glad to see it," says Toby Moore, a researcher who worked in the division's voting section from 2000 to 2005. "It's way overdue."

That's because Schlozman, who was a senior political official in the division from 2003 to 2006, including five months as its acting assistant attorney general, has emerged as the latest lightning rod for allegations that the Justice Department has become politicized during the Bush administration.

Here's more ..

Labels: Birdia Keglar, Chaney, Charles Eddie Moore, Charles Moore, civil rights, civil rights movement, Cleve McDowell, cold cases

Judge refuses to dismiss Miss. civil rights-era kidnapping case against reputed Klansman

HOLBROOK MOHR Associated Press Writer
Wednesday May 2nd, 2007

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A federal judge on Wednesday refused to dismiss the case against a reputed Ku Klux Klansman charged with kidnapping in the brutal 1964 slayings of two black Mississippi teenagers.

The ruling in the case of James Ford Seale came exactly 43 years after the killings of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. The teens were seized near the southwest Mississippi town of Roxie and beaten before they were weighted down and thrown into the Mississippi River to drown.

Defense lawyers had argued Wednesday that the case is far too old for Seale to get a fair trial.

Federal public defender Kathy Nester called to the stand an investigator who testified that 36 potential witnesses are dead or unavailable.

"Every time we tried to follow these roads, we stopped at a grave site," Nester said.

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Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights movement, cold cases, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Homochitto National Forest, James Ford Seale, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Mississippi

JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) -- In life, FBI informant Earnest Gilbert so feared his fellow Ku Klux Klansmen that he never had the courage to testify about the 1964 killings of two black teenagers. In death, his voice is finally being heard in a courtroom.

Prosecutors in a revived civil rights-era case are trying to persuade a federal judge to allow a television interview that Gilbert, who died in 2004, gave in 2000 to be used as evidence in the trial of reputed Klansman James Ford Seale.

Defense attorneys on Tuesday played clips of the ABC "20/20" interview about the slayings of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19.

On May 2, 1964 -- exactly 43 years ago today -- the teens were abducted in the southwest Mississippi town of Roxie and beaten in the Homochitto National Forest before being weighted down and thrown into the Mississippi River to drown.

Continue

Labels: Charles Eddie Moore, civil rights movement, cold cases, Henry Hezekiah Dee, Homochitto National Forest, James Ford Seale, Ku Klux Klan, Mississippi, murder