Kathy Mabry's murder investigation puts a spotlight on unproven forensic analysis.
Belzoni, MS- J.D. "Bubba" Roseman, the first black sheriff of Humphreys County, is a convivial man. In his office and in casual conversations on the street in this town of 2,200, he engages people quickly and easily, inquiring about a son on the football team, a niece in college or a grandmother in the hospital. He talks loud and fast, always smiling, and works a deep, infectious laugh into just about every conversation.
But when Roseman, 57, talks about Kathy Mabry, the mirth drains from his face. His brow straightens. He speaks softly. He pauses from time to time to swallow the catch that latches onto his words, and his eyes sometimes well up. It's an unexpected thing from a stout man wearing a gun.
Mabry was murdered here in 1997 at the age of 39. This part of America once produced murder ballads about brutal crimes like this one -- blues greats like Pinetop Perkins, Elmore James and Sonny Boy Williamson have all called Humphreys County home.
Kathy Mabry's killer raped her, then slashed her face, head and throat with a rusty razor blade. She was left to bleed to death on the floor of a vacant house. "I think about that case every day," Roseman says. "I told Kathy's momma I wouldn't get an honest night's rest until we got the man who did this."
Roseman was the Belzoni police chief back then, the first black man elected to that position as well. His election to both positions shows just how much the region has changed over the past half century. In what may have been the first assassination of the civil rights era, the Rev. George Lee was murdered here in 1955 while registering blacks to vote. In those years, white citizen councils beat civil rights volunteers with such frequency that the town earned the nickname "Bloody Belzoni."
Today, Humphreys (population: about 9,000) is the seventh-poorest county in America's poorest state. The poverty rate here approaches 40 percent. But it's also a close-knit community, where families go back several generations or more. Violent crime is rare. The county saw all of one murder in 2012. "It just doesn't happen that often here," Roseman says.
Mabry's murder stunned people here in part because it was so unexpected, but also because it was so unspeakably vicious. "She came from a quiet, respected family," Roseman says. "They're well-liked. Most folks around here hadn't ever experienced that kind of murder. So it shook the town. It's still shaking the town."
The case went unsolved for 15 years, until December, after a casual courtroom conversation led lawyers from the Mississippi Innocence Project to investigate it. That two attorneys for an organization better known for getting the wrongly convicted out of prison would take it upon themselves to solve a cold case is remarkable enough. Their search covered the state, from Columbus in the northeast, to Oxford in the northwest, to the crime lab in Jackson, to a dusty attic in the Humphreys County courthouse, deep in the belly of the Delta.
The reason they felt compelled to act is part of a larger scandal currently unfolding in Mississippi. The original police investigation into Mabry's murder hinged on the forensic analysis of Steven Hayne, a longtime Mississippi medical examiner, and Michael West, a dentist and self-proclaimed bite-mark expert. Hayne was a doctor in private practice who at the time performed nearly all of the state's autopsies. West was one of his frequent collaborators. The two men have been at the heart of the Mississippi death investigation system for two decades. West has testified in dozens of cases, Hayne in thousands, including a number of death penalty cases.
Media investigations over the years, however, including my own for The Huffington Post and Reason magazine, have revealed that both Hayne and West have contributed critical evidence that led to the convictions of people who were later exonerated, and routinely and flagrantly flouted the ethical and professional standards of their respective fields. West, for example, once claimed he could match the bite marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich found at a murder scene to the teeth of the prime suspect. In a more recent case, Hayne claimed the bullet wounds in a murder victim showed that two people held the gun when it was fired, not one. In the Mabry case, West used bite-mark analysis to nab an innocent man for Mabry's murder. That man spent nearly a year in jail. But the Mabry story also shows that the victims in this scandal include not just the wrongly accused, but the families of the victims, the future victims of the actual perpetrators, public officials like Roseman, and even entire towns.
Mississippi officials have thus far resisted calls for a thorough review of Hayne and West's work. In particular, the Mississippi Supreme Court has shown little concern over the possibility that Hayne and West may have put an untold number of innocents behind the razor wire at Parchman penitentiary. Neither has Attorney General Jim Hood, whose office continues to defend convictions won primarily on the testimony one or both of the men have given on the witness stand. To concede there's a problem would implicate many state officials who used the two men during tenures as prosecutors. It would also open hundreds, perhaps thousands of cases to review.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/17/kathy-mabry-murder-steven-hayne-michael-west_n_2456970.html
 http://bitemarks.org/