President Lincoln freed the slaves but he couldn’t possibly anticipate how the justice system in the American South would work to continue to oppress them. In this book, the authors expose the institutionalized corruption within the state of Mississippi. They begin with two cases of wrongful incarceration and move into the history of the legal system within the state and the difficulties that have been encountered in trying to establish a medical examiner system. The book serves to expose two people in particular, Dr. Steven Hayne, who performs the majority of the autopsies for the state for over two decades, and Dr. Michael West, a country dentist. The both built careers for themselves in forensics, taking full advantage of the good-ol’-boy structure of the legal environment in the state.

I found this book both sad and compelling. It is always sad for me to be confronted by corruption in America. We call ourselves a Christian nation but too often there are very un-Christian things happening. I also found the tenacity and persistence of the victims of this system to be very compelling. The two wrongly convicted murderers, one of whom spent years on death row, did not give up and neither did their Project Innocence defense teams. In the process of working to free these two men they helped to expose the doctors whose actions had created the sole source of evidence against many wrongfully convicted defendants. I think this book serves as a good reminder that while our justice system may be good it is not always perfect and it is not free from the risk of corruption. If more people had this awareness perhaps improvement could be made at a more rapid pace. I really enjoyed reading this book. It’s written in a way that is appealing to a broad range of readers and the story moves at a really nice pace. This is a top-notch expose and I highly recommend it.

This book makes me so angry about the state of our legal system and just underscores the need for accountability. I'm also now second-guessing any time I trusted an expert witness to provide factual information in court cases. It boggles my mind how this could continue for so long, and how even when challenged people still did their best to keep the corrupt in power. I kept expecting Haynes and West to be operating in the 1950s or '60s and no, no they've been abusing the system for as long as I've been alive and I'm in my 30s.

I found the book to be a hard, devastating read content-wise and an easy read language-wise, although at times Balko gets lost in some of the details or wanders off on a tangent. I appreciated the tangents, though, and thought they helped me to better see the larger picture of how deep the corruption in our legal system, and in Mississippi in particular, runs.

There's a fundamental mismatch between science as a discipline and the legal system that would really like to use scientific evidence to support its conclusions, and this book makes a terrifically thorough case that forensic science as it currently exists and is practiced is the worst of both worlds. By focusing on the egregious case of Stephen Hayne and Michael West (and the Mississippi legal system that enabled their corruption) Balko and Carrington present a very bleak view of the likelihood of justice in our current system.

Upgraded to 4 stars after finishing. Great book and fantastic research. Overall such a disturbing story that this type of cronyism and incompetence still exists in the 21st century.
Original review: Thank you Perseus Books, Public Affairs and Netgalley for the advanced reader copy. Full disclosure, I have not (yet) finished the book. The subject is fascinating to me and the writing is engaging. However, due to the length of the book, I have not been able to finish. I cannot call it too long since I haven’t finished it yet and I plan to finish it.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington is a disturbing and disheartening look at glaring flaws in the U.S. justice system and how two men in Mississippi exploited those flaws with devastating consequences.

The book focuses on the careers of Steven Hayne, a former forensic pathologist, and Michael West, a former forensic odontologist, who were involved in thousands of death investigations, mostly in Mississippi. Hayne performed 80 to 90 percent of criminal autopsies in MIssissippi for decades despite not having proper certification and performing about 5 times the number of autopsies per year that is recommended to perform them properly. Michael West testified hundreds of times as a bite mark matching expert and whose testimony sent many innocent people to prison. The book describes how the history and the evolution of the justice system in the U.S. and around the world allowed there to be shortcomings when it came to assessing the validity of expert testimony in forensic science. In the U.S. when an expert testifies they are being used to convince the court of certain facts based on their knowledge and experience. The problem is that no one in the court may have the necessary knowledge to determine whether the expert’s testimony is scientifically accurate. The book describes how a number of fields of forensic science that have been used countless times to convict people are actually junk science. These fields include things like blood spatter analysis, tool mark matching, and bite mark analysis like Michael West performed.

The research in this book is incredibly thorough and it shows just how extensive the problems are in the U.S. justice system are when it comes to dealing with forensic science. The book also shows just how resistant the system is to correcting mistakes. A number of people who were put away by testimony from Steven Hayne and Michael West have been exonerated by DNA testing that wasn’t available when they were convicted. However, there are other cases where DNA testing isn’t an option and convictions haven’t been overturned despite the fact that Hayne and West have been so thoroughly discredited. There also has been strong resistance from the state of Mississippi to proposals to study how many people may have been wrongfully convicted due to testimony from Hayne and West. There just isn’t an incentive for state officials to expose themselves and their colleagues to the kind of scrutiny that a study like that would require.

This is a great read for those who are interested in the subject of the U.S. justice system and wrongful convictions. It is a very dense book that covers some very grisly cases and horrible injustices, which can make it a very tough read for those only casually interested in the subjects covered. However, the things that are covered in this book will undoubtedly stick with the reader for a very long time.

This book is about the rape and murder of 2 little toddler girls in Mississippi. Unfortunately, due to faulty testimonies and junk science, 2 innocent men were convicted of these heinous crimes. This book follows an investigation into the convictions of these innocent men, who spent decades in prison. Fortunately, justice has prevailed in case and the killer confessed and has been convicted and sentenced to LWOP. This book contains some very good information, as it was well researched. It was also written well, easy to read and to follow. This book sent me in many directions with my emotions. It is a must read for those who enjoy justice or true crime.

A very well researched look at how the criminal justice system has failed and continues to fail minorities and the poor through the use of junk science. Balko leaves no stone unturned in uncovering the injustices these two wrongly convicted men endured for over two decades. A must read for true crime fans and those interested in social justice.

This book is a comprehensive, incredibly well researched exploration of the intertwining of politics, law, justice/injustice, and racism in the deep south.

I read a lot of true crime and sociology, but I've never read a book that explores corruption within our legal system in regards to our coroners and medical examiners. I'm embarrassed to admit that I never considered this angle. The science, we like to think, should be the trustworthy aspect of our justice system. Radley Balko shows us, without question, that all "facts" can be manipulated, or simply eliminated, when convenient.

What I felt while reading this book was total outrage, disgust, and sorrow. The events portrayed are difficult to align with any conception of justice, even as flawed as I knew the system to be.

While I have immense respect for the author's undertaking, I did have some problems with the way the book was put together. The story revolves around Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West, as the title suggests, but really this book takes on the entire modern-day political and legal system in rural Mississippi. We have a whole lot of people moving in and out, including judges, lawyers, politicians, medical examiners, doctors, victims, and the accused.

The scope of this book is enormous and at times lacks focus. This was the crux of the problem for me. The author occasionally takes us wandering into areas that are interesting, but not pertinent. For instance, we're given lengthy education on the history of coroners from the time of the Crusades. Throughout the book, we seem to wobble in and out of the timeline, jumping from one case to another, and then over to a side bit, and then on to something else. Keeping up with all the players, their stories, the cases, and the various tidbits makes for an exhausting reading experience.

In fairness to the author, the magnitude of these events had to be difficult to wrangle into a neat and concise story. This was not one or two people caught in corruption; this was the entire system, from its core on out. The entire mess is so badly entangled that unraveling it to find the core problem demands we pull out all the many threads. And so I recommend reading this book because, until you see all the pieces, you won't believe the whole picture could be real.

This is a great book that took me through a variety of emotions. We all have heard stories of injustices and that is what this book highlights Injustice in any form is bad, but when it happens with the help of so called professionals,that makes it even more apalling. This book takes up the cause of two men who were wrongly convicted due to the testiomony of 2 inadequate people whom happen to be a dentist and a doctor. How these men were able to continue their lies for so long is astounding. I am still shaking my head.This book will stay with me for a long time. Yes, the book has a lot of information, but please take the time to read it all. :It shows how easily one's freedom can be snatched away unjustly. Thanks to NetGalley,the author, and the publisher for the ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

This was an incredibly disturbing look at criminal justice in the old south. It was a little wordy. It could have benefited with tighter editing.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist: A True Story of Injustice in the American South by Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington is a highly recommended account of the corrupt criminal justice system in Mississippi in the 1970s into the 1990s.

This book tells the story of a doctor and a dentist, two of the most audacious and arrogant experts ever allowed in a courtroom. The focus is on collusion of the medical experts with the legal system in Mississippi. Towards that end, the trials of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks are examples of the ineptitude of the status quo. Both men were wrongly convicted of the sexual assault and murder of two three-year-old girls in rural Mississippi in the 1990s. (The two men were exonerated in 2007.) For over two decades the doctor and the dentist had built a career on providing "expert" testimony for prosecutors in Mississippi.

Steven Hayne was the controversial medical examiner who bragged of performing over two thousand autopsies in a single year. His notes were vague enough (and not always correct) that he could often assess the atmosphere at the trial and then tailor his testimony to fit what he was observing. Michael West was a dentist who, with no formal training or peer reviewed studies, "assumed the role of an expert in many other fields, such as ballistics, gunshot reconstruction, 'tool mark' patterns, and the analysis not only of teeth and bite marks but wound patterns, bruises, and fingernail scratches." These two testified at numerous trials throughout Mississippi and Louisiana. The questionable autopsies of Hayne will frustrate you (he once wrote in his notes that he removed the uterus and ovaries from a male), but the junk forensic science of West is going to infuriate you. The blatant sexism and racism is also distressing.

"As you turn the pages, you will often be tempted to close this book and either laugh or cry or yell that what happened in Mississippi cannot possibly be true. But it is. It happened in plain view and with the complicity of many who were sworn to uphold the law." Reading The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist will truly be an exasperating, maddening experience as you will wonder why this went on for so long.

That question is answered. In the 1970s and into the 1990s the state legislature was unwilling to provide the budget for a modern-day state medical examiner’s office. Adding to this were the coroners, who were a powerful group who fought against reforms and were protective of the authority of their positions. Finally, prosecutors and law enforcement wanted solved murder cases, even though some knew there were legitimate questions about the quality of the expert testimony of the doctor and the dentist.

The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist is an excellent well-written and researched account of the criminal incompetence that was allowed to occur for way-too-long in Mississippi. The strength of this book is also the weakness: the plethora of information, background, and history is exhaustive. Balko and Carrington have been researching and following this for years and the book is a culmination of that comprehensive coverage. The information runs the gamete between inciting anger and indignation to providing rather tiresome background of the history of coroners. The historical notes can be skipped over for those readers who are more concerned with following the prevailing absurdities of the doctor and the dentist and want to know when they finally were retired from providing "expert" testimony. The book includes extensive notes. 4.5 stars

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of PublicAffairs via Netgalley.
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This was a sad and tragic retelling of the story about a pair of so-called doctors in Mississippi who got involved in the court system as professional testifiers. The first one is the prolific Dr. Steven Hayne. He had lined himself up to be in a position to be doing an incredible 80% of the state's autopsies when he already had 2 full-time jobs to do. Plus lab work, testifying, private autopsies, and other duties. Not to mention that when the recommended number of per year is 350 to keep from overdoing and making errors, Hayne was doing 1200 to 1800 a year, mostly at night, so he can keep pace with his other jobs and obligations during the day. Needless to say, he can't be doing all of it well or correctly. There are often reports of cases where he claimed to have removed and weighed organs from bodies, which when exhumed years later turned out to be fully intact. Or in other cases, one or more organs had been surgically removed years before the autopsy. Troubling indeed.

For help with such a huge workload, he often brings in his helper, Dr. Michael West, a country dentist who also has an interest in forensics and bite marks in particular and has styled himself as a specialist in the field and advertises himself as a hired gun to prosecutors. Together they package themselves and promote their various "skills" to various police agencies and area prosecutors as being available to help with difficult cases to make them more solvable. The problems lie in how they accomplished this.

Then comes a couple of murder cases, Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, two black men both convicted in different cases of brutally raping and killing young girls. Dr. Hayne's autopsy information and Dr. West's bite mark testimony was involved in convicting both of these young men... wrongfully convicting them. By the time they were able to get help from The Innocence Project, they had long been in prison many years. but were finally able to be exonerated. It was finally proven that another man had killed the girls. But still, Dr. Hayne was used as a coroner for a long time. It took some time but Dr. West fell out of favor. It seemed Dr. Hayne never might but he finally did too. I was provided a copy by NetGalley, Radley Balko, and Perseus Books for my honest review.

One of the key necessities in determining the facts of a crime is in making the story fit the evidence, not the evidence fit the story. This book shows how a complex system of corrupt or stupid attorneys, judges, policemen, a coroner and a dentist managed to convict a number of innocent people In Mississippi over several decades. It boggles the mind that this was allowed to go on for so long.

Mississippi has consistently ranked near the bottom of the country when it comes to education and government. So, it should come as no surprise that instead of a psychologist they had a former children’s entertainer, known as Uncle Bunky, conducting police interviews with children.

That said, the book can be dry in parts and confusing in others. Keeping track of all the names was difficult. The authors tend to go off on tangents. For example, do we really need to know the history of how coroners came into being after the Crusades? I can understand the desire to give us a lot of background. It’s just not always told in a concise or easy to follow manner.

That's not to say there aren’t lots of interesting facts here. Coroners’ juries were an earlier version of a grand jury. Their declining to identify the party at fault would stop an investigation by Sheriffs or police. This was consistently used to allow lynchings to go unpunished.

The big surprise here is that Haynes and West weren’t operating in the 1930s or 1950s. They started out in the 1980s and their heyday was the 1990s through the mid 2000s before DNA began to expose their speculations and theories as blatant falsehoods. The stories of how they went about their “business” would be laughable if innocent lives hadn’t been at stake. It makes one realize how gullible folks are when presented with scientific sounding theories. And how willing prosecutors are to go out on a limb to secure a conviction.

One thing to point out to other readers. This book is much more about the Mississippi medico-legal system (as the authors call it) than about Haynes and West specifically. While it’s a persuasive thesis against Mississippi, it makes for a dry narrative.

My thanks to netgalley and Perseus Books for an advance copy of this book.

Discrimination and the justice system in Mississippi. An abusive system of wrong convictions, lives ruined, and corrupt politics. An amazing read!

My apologies but I could not finish this book. It was very well written and researched; I have just read too many other books about this same type of injustice and it was too much for me at this time in my life.

ok...can I give it 6 stars? I have been reading for a lot of years...and very seldom have gushed about a book..."It" by Stephen King..."Time to Kill" by John Grisham...but a true crime book...even though true crime is one of my favorite genres to read...I can't say I ever gushed about one...but this one I am...there may be spoilers ...so be warned... but since we know this is true crime...we all know where most of this goes...ok...

I have been reading and watching not just true crime but specifically true crime where defendants are exonerated...so this book drew my attention when I first saw it...but I had no idea of the ride I was about to start...

I read this book... stunned to see the numbers that were given concerning the state of Mississippi... the system seems to have had so many incompetent people as coroners who had the ability to decide if a death should be investigated a murder...if it is undetermined...it couldn't be a murder...and when there was a murder...the vast majority of autopsies were performed by one man...who remarkably could give testimony on pretty much any aspect of a murder ...blood spatter...access points...how the murder happened...his genius never ended...the prosecutors loved him...the judges loved him...he could say or document one thing...then upon further work this could be changed to meet what they needed...tissue samples disappeared ...oops sorry...didn't note there were marks on the body originally? oops sorry...everything was just like I said...just trust me...they could then bring in a "Bite mark expert" who somehow could find teeth marks on just about anybody who was murdered (evidently people in Mississippi are mostly cannibals or at least the murderers are) and specifically only the upper teeth...so not really bites but just resting places for the upper plate....he could find bite marks by his own designed special technique saying that only he can see it...and the juries and courts ate it up...how could anyone be so stupid???? I see so many wrongful convictions being corrected ..sometimes...there is just going to be wrongful convictions but these should be the rare case...not the rule...then to compound matters...even when these two "experts" were basically discredited...the court system and the prosecutors will not open up cases from the past of these two...so many people sit in jail...some on death row...knowing that their testimony was fabricated or...at best...poor science to no science...how can this happen in a country where we should be striving to always be the most meticulous? ...and the most sure?...I am appalled ...and sickened...I am hoping that this book will lead to better things in Mississippi and throughout the country...I know this topic is huge right now...but at the same time I have hope...It is small...when prosecutors will be confronted by proof ...DNA proof... that the person they convicted was not this person...but will say...well...they could have still been there...so could santa clause...but its doubtful...whatever happened to reasonable doubt? I know that i have heard that when they center on someone they have no reason to keep looking...but you just can't make the evidence meet what you need...you have to follow where the evidence leads...and this book shows this is not even close to what happens...This book is a scary eye opener...but an amazing read...I give it the highest rating... My review on goodreads appears here. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2233532313

No one would believe this as a movie, I found it hard to believe as a book. It scares me to think that it happened and since the same hatred based on class and race OF ALL KINDS is prevalent today it will happen again. This book is depressing but a needed warning that even after 30 years the flames of man's hatred continues to burn

In the early 1990s, two young girls were taken from their Mississippi homes, raped, and murdered. Two men, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, were separately arrested, tried, and convicted for the crimes (Levon Brooks for the rape and murder of Courtney Smith in 1990, and Brewer for the rape and murder of Christine Jackson in 1992). Their convictions were won largely on the back of forensic testimony from coroner Dr. Stephen Hayne and self-styled bitemark expert Dr. Michael West. The problem? Both men were using extremely flawed (and some would say fraudulent) methods in their analyses. Michael West’s reputation as a huckster is so bad that he was featured in John Oliver’s exposé on the flaws of forensic testimony. Rather than striving for truth and justice, both doctors gained a reputation for helping to put away the person the police decided was guilty, no matter the flimsiness of the case.

Both men were eventually exonerated, but not before they had spent a combined 30 years in prison. Cadaver King (the authors are associated with The Innocence Project, which was instrumental in freeing Brooks and Brewer) examines the highly flawed coroner system in Mississippi, the faith placed by judges and juries on forensic methods which have not been scientifically evaluated, and a justice system which is reluctant to address and rectify its mistakes, even at the cost of keeping innocent men imprisoned.

This book examines the historical and racial roots that formed the justice system in Mississippi into what it would become. The book runs through the Reconstruction and Civil Rights eras–when the coroner system was used to enable and hide racial violence–to the turn of the twenty-first century, when lack of training, funding, and oversight allowed old habits to merge with modern science.

This book is horrifying and thought provoking. Faith in our justice system is one of tenets of our society. We should strive for the ideal that ojustice in this cointry rises above petty prejudices, that it demands accountability and accuracy from expert witnesses. That any person walking into a courtroom will leave with the verdict they deserve. While I’m certainly not naive enough to think that our system is infallible, seeing just how far we are from that heady ideal is devastating. This book serves as a reminder that the system is a creature of habit, and change will come more quickly if we begin to sit up and take notice.

An advance copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Relevant in the current times. Black lives matter. Blue lives matter. Politics is corrupt. Politicians are corrupt. Justice is not always down. Murder is just downright interesting. Good read.

In an enlightening forward to this newest look at the American justice process gone awry, John Grisham, who serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project in New York, lays out the eight reasons that tend to lead to wrongful convictions. This is a topic that's gotten a lot of play recently, from a string of other books to TV series and podcasts. From there, we're off on an examination of two men who built up a lucrative business between themselves, as well as boosting their own reputations, while sending an overwhelming number of innocents to prison and sometimes, their deaths.

If finding out how and why that happened isn't enough to make you want to read this book, I don't know what is.

For twenty years, medical examiner Steven Hayne and his friend, dentist Michael West, ran a racket in Mississippi, with Dr. Hayne performing the majority of the state's autopsies, and West being called in to supply forensic odontology services when Hayne discovered potential bite marks on murder victims' bodies, or when prosecution suspected certain marks could be from human teeth. In the process, the two

The book examines in detail two cases the pair collaborated on to secure convictions, those of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. Both men were tried, sentenced and imprisoned for the rapes and murders of two three-year-old girls. Neither were guilty, in fact one perpetrator was responsible for both of these similar crimes.

Both of their crimes and Hayne's and West's roles in them are detailed, so we can see how the two sprang into action when the potential to earn income as expert witnesses for the prosecution arises. As small introductory examples of their "work" - Hayne performed autopsies in droves, completing many times more than other medical examiners and beyond the legal allowance. West regularly identified insect activity evidence as bite marks, and created molds of suspects' teeth that he then used to actually insert bite marks into skin in the guise of seeing the two patterns matched.

Hayne didn't merely bring West on as a consultant and then turn the analysis over to him; he deferred to West in his report. The two were essentially in business together. They advertised themselves to law enforcement agencies in two states. The process they used to tie Brooks to Courtney Smith's murder had become their modus operandi: Hayne would find suspicious marks, conclude they were bite marks, and then bring West in to "match" them to the chief suspect. It's a process they had repeated before, and would repeat over and over again.


The book also includes a history of coroners, to help better understand the broken system the two men were able to successfully exploit for two decades. "The popular conception of the coroner's physician was a broken-down, alcoholic wreck unfit to treat the living, or a sociopathic personality who preferred the company of the dead. It was hardly the company a talented young physician would care to join."

Despite the relatively low pay of the state positions in forensic pathology, a doctor willing to bend the profession's guidelines to help supply meet demand could make good money. There are quite a few places across the country where that's exactly what happened - where doctors have willingly performed significantly more autopsies than the field's governing bodies recommend. But nowhere did it happen on the scale it did in Mississippi.

Something very significant to the doctors' dirty work, and that I was (naively?) surprised to learn, was that bite mark analysis and other forms of "pattern analysis," like blood spatter, aren't really scientific. They're pattern recognition.

Bite mark analysis, along with fields like tire tread analysis, "tool mark" matching, blood spatter analysis, and even fingerprint analysis, all belong to a class of forensics called "pattern matching." These fields are problematic because although they're often presented to juries as scientific, they're actually entirely subjective.

I now cringe if I see bite mark or blood spatter analysis mentioned on Forensic Files or the like. It makes you aware how much these come into play in murder cases, how heavily they're relied upon - knowing they can be manipulated and abused at worse, and are shoddy imitations of real science science at best, with little differentiation or clarification for juries, is certainly troublesome. Granted, West had severely unscrupulous methods for using and manipulating bite mark analysis, so we can only hope that others aren't getting away with the same abuses, but the possibility even existing is what's horrifying.

West was retained by law enforcement and proved most useful to them after they'd already identified a suspect. Then he'd simply twist the evidence by doing things like finding marks on the body that had been previously overlooked and attributing them to bites, throw in some medical jargon and pseudoscientific speak, and turn on charm during a jury trial to bring the whole thing home. "West confirms whatever suspicions the police have," someone else puts it succinctly elsewhere. He got paid enormously well for his prep and testimony time, and there you have it.

A Mississippi defense attorney is quoted, "No district attorney in the Deep South stands a chance of reelection if a murder occurs in his or her jurisdiction and somebody does not wind up in prison for it." We know there's a lot of pressure like this to solve crimes, particularly compounded when they involve children like those examined in detail in this book. But it should be more motivation to work harder with what the actual evidence is saying to find the actual perpetrator, instead of manipulating evidence to match an easy one. If that had been done in rural Mississippi, one of the two little girls mentioned above would still be alive.

Funding, or lack thereof, and politics are major issues that also helped these two stay in business for so long, and so prolifically. After pushing out a medical examiner who caused problems for them, the position remained vacant. West said, "What we don't need is a medical pathologist who wants to argue with other pathologists about cause of death, which has happened in the past."

Reading that statement after reading about their doings is mind-boggling. As the authors write, that's obviously EXACTLY what Mississippi needed, and what would have not only kept innocent men out of jail, (some still languishing there) but saved lives.

Hayne collected lots of dubious certifications, another element that makes you wonder how it's possible. With these realistically entirely insignificant credentials, which weren't questioned on the stand in court, he could suitably impress juries into believing he held membership in significant organizations in various forensic fields. Here's an example of one such organization:

The august-sounding American College of Forensic Examiners Institute (ACFEI) was founded by Robert Louis O'Block, a criminal justice professor who...had been terminated from Appalachian State University in 1991 for plagiarism...O'Block developed an interest in the field of handwriting analysis. But when he applied for membership with an existing organization of forensic handwriting experts, they rejected him. So he decided to form his own credentialing organization for handwriting and put himself in charge. In 1992 he founded the American Board of Forensic Handwriting Analysts. Fraud magazine reported in 2012 that as O'Block expanded his group to other disciplines, he also hired his first national training director for the organization, a high school graduate with no college experience who claimed he could enlarge women's breasts through hypnosis. (The breast-enlarging hypnotist would later resign as a result of his own doubts about O'Block's credibility.)

Yes, that's completely hilarious (including that Fraud magazine exists - reminds me of 30 Rock when Jack Donaghy references Meetings magazine!) but wait: it's a lot less funny when you consider that organizations like this are "endorsing" so-called specialists and providing crucial analysis and testimony in criminal cases, putting potentially innocent people in prison and sometimes on death row. It's so terrifying I can't believe it's real. This whole book is like that.

Although at times some heavy focus on facts and figures made it somewhat dry in parts, and it fell a little on the long side and could've been more streamlined, it's an undeniably important book with some fascinating revelations that deserved the thorough treatment they're getting here. We need to be much more aware of what comprises certain elements of our criminal justice systems, and how and why any weaknesses are abused.

Excellent if frightening reportage on a topic that needs to be much more mainstream than it currently is.