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| Steven Hayne |
This week, the controversial former Mississippi medical examiner
Steven Hayne testified at a hearing for Jeffrey Havard. Havard was convicted in 2002 of sexually assaulting and shaking to death Chloe Britt, the 6-month-old daughter of Havard’s live-in girlfriend. Havard has always maintained that the infant hit her head on the toilet after he dropped her while giving her a bath.
But Havard made some mistakes. He first failed to tell his girlfriend — and later doctors and investigators — that he had dropped the girl. By the time he did, they understandably no longer believed him. But the evidence against Havard has always been thin. It has mostly consisted of testimony from Hayne that Chloe Britt died from shaking, not from a blow to the head consistent with Havard’s story. The symptoms Hayne cited to make that diagnosis have since been called into question in the medical and forensics communities. But the shaken baby syndrome (SBS) diagnosis alone probably wouldn’t have allowed the state to seek the death penalty. That’s perhaps why prosecutors also alleged the sexual assault. By the time of Havard’s trial, doctors, ER nurses, the county sheriff and the local county coroner all claimed to have seen significant damage to Chloe Britt’s rectum, damage they testified was consistent with abuse. Hayne, too, seemed to concur with the sexual abuse allegation. He claimed at trial to have found a found a one-inch contusion on the girl’s anus. When the prosecutor asked Hayne what could have caused the contusion, he replied, “penetration of the rectum by an object.”
But Hayne’s autopsy on the girl showed no such abuse. The one-inch contusion he claimed at trial was actually only one centimeter (he claimed he misspoke). Since Havard’s conviction,
multiple medical
examiners and other experts have
submitted affidavits on his behalf to dispute both the
SBS diagnosis and the state’s claim of sexual abuse. The Mississippi Supreme Court hasn’t shown much interest.
At trial, Havard’s attorney requested funds to hire his own medical examiner to review Hayne’s work. The judge turned him down. After the conviction and death sentence, former Alabama state medical examiner Jim Lauridson
submitted an affidavit on Havard’s behalf questioning Hayne’s conclusions about the sexual abuse. Lauridson pointed out that what the doctors, nurses and law enforcement officials likely saw during those frantic moments in the emergency room was a dilated anus, which often occurs in young children who are brain-dead, or shortly after death. Hayne’s own photos of the girl’s body, taken after she was cleaned up, showed no signs of sexual abuse.
Source: The Washington Post, Opinion, Radley Balko, August 16, 2017. Radley Balko blogs about criminal justice, the drug war and civil liberties for The Washington Post. He is the author of the book "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces."
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