Mississippi has been without a state medical examiner for nearly fourteen years. County coroners have been contracting with numerous private pathologists, but primarily Dr. Steven Hayne. Lately some of his work has come under scrutiny. Public Safety Commissioner Steve Simpson announced that Hayne has been taken off the list of pathologists that can be used by county coroners and that the state will finally be hiring a medical examiner. Hayne is not eligible to apply for the job because he isn’t board certified in the correct area. He once took the test to become board certified, but failed.
Hayne was performing 1,500 autopsies per year, which is slightly over four a day, assuming he worked weekends and holidays, or nearly 6 a day assuming he took weekends off, but no holidays. This is in addition to testifying in court on a regular basis. The National Association of Medical Examiners recommends no more than 250 per year, which means Hayne was doing the work of 6 doctors.
I found a very interesting article in Reason that chronicles Hayne’s career and the system that let him keep doing what he was doing. It’s on the long side, but well worth reading. Hayne once testified that he could tell from a bullet wound that two people simultaneously pulled the trigger. In another case, organs that Hayne claimed to have weighed during an autopsy turned out to still be in the corpse. In yet another case he changed the cause of death so he could be paid to testify in a lawsuit.
Hayne claims that he’s been caught up in a “witch hunt,” but after reading the Reason article, I’m convinced. It’s amazing that it took this long for something to be done.