News and Updates

Dr. Steven T. Hayne performed as many as 1,700 autopsies annually from the late 1980s to the late 2000s.

JACKSON, Miss. — For a long time, if a body turned up in Mississippi it had a four-in-five chance of ending up in front of Dr. Steven T. Hayne.

Between the late 1980s and the late 2000s, Dr. Hayne had the field of forensic pathology in Mississippi almost to himself, performing thousands of autopsies and delivering his findings around the state as an expert witness in civil and criminal cases. For most of that time, Dr. Hayne performed about 1,700 autopsies annually, more than four for every day of the year and nearly seven times the maximum caseload recommended by the National Association of Medical Examiners.

The Central Park Five attend the New York City opening of the documentary about their case

Twenty-four years ago this April, the so-called Central Park Jogger case thrust five young men into the national spotlight amid the racist media hysteria that was fueling a law-and-order policing agenda then and in the years after.

On April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old white woman named Trisha Meili was raped in New York City's Central Park. The police unleashed a manhunt, sweeping up 30 young men and interrogating a number of whom were allegedly in the park that night. Fanning the flames was a media frenzy about "wilding" by "wolf packs" of Black and Latino youth.

Within several days, five African American and Latino teenagers had been arrested in the case--Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise.

A North Carolina judge ruled on evidence that prosecutors worked to get blacks eliminated from the pool of jurors

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — A North Carolina judge on Thursday commuted the death sentences of three convicted killers, including two who killed law enforcement officers, to life in prison without the possibility of parole after ruling that race played an unjust role in jury selection at their trials.

Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Gregory A. Weeks based his ruling on evidence presented over four weeks of hearings that he says showed prosecutors in each case made a concerted effort to reduce the number of black jurors.

The three who had their sentences commuted were among the most notorious killers on North Carolina’s death row.

Family members of the victims and more than 60 uniformed police officers packed the courtroom. Before Weeks could finish issuing his ruling, the brother of a murdered state trooper stood up and yelled an expletive at the judge.