6. In the 2011 case Council v. Bingham, a federal district judge in the same Fifth District again ruled that the growing media coverage (including my own) of Hayne and mounting questions about his credibility still didn’t undermine his status as an expert witness.
Council claims she is innocent of the charge based on new evidence that Dr. Hayne is not licensed and is a forensic fraud and wrongfully testified in her case . . . She further states thatDr. Hayne testified that the victim was stabbed six times but never stated how the wounds were inflicted. Id. Council attaches to her petition an article by Radley Balko, “CSI: Mississippi, A case study in expert testimony gone horribly wrong,” criticizing Dr. Hayne and his qualifications . . .
The fact that Dr. Hayne may have been criticized in a magazine article does not establish that he is a “forensic fraud” or that he wrongfully testified in Council’s case.
In a footnote, the court adds:
According to the magazine article, Dr. Hayne is not board certified in forensic pathology. See Petition [1–3] at 30. At trial, Dr. Hayne testified that he is a physician practicing in the fields of anatomic, clinical, and forensic pathology. He did not claim to be board certified in forensic pathology . . .
The article also references the Mississippi Supreme Court’s decision in Edmonds v. State . . . where the court reversed and remanded defendant’s murder conviction, holding in part that Dr. Hayne’s testimony pertaining to the two-shooter theory was improperly admitted, as the State made no proffer of any scientific testing performed to support the theory. However, as Respondent points out, the court did not find that Dr. Hayne was not qualified to proffer expert opinions in forensic pathology. Respondent further notes that since the Edmonds decision, Mississippi appellate courts have consistently found Dr. Hayne qualified to testify as an expert.
Here, the ruling is correct: Appeals courts in Mississippi have consistently upheld Hayne’s status as an expert witness. The ruling lists two of them:
See Lima v. State, 7 So.3d 903, 907 (Miss. 2009) (holding that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it accepted Dr. Hayne as an expert, despite defendant’s claim that Dr. Hayne was not qualified as an expert “because his work load was too heavy, he lacked reliability, his work lacked peer review, and he was not board-certified by the American Board of Pathology in forensic pathology”); Keys v. State, 33 So.3d 1143, 1150 (Miss. Ct. App. 2009) (finding that Dr. Hayne’s testimony as to the cause and manner of death of victim was permissible where the trial court accepted that Dr. Hayne was qualified as an expert in the area of forensic pathology without any objection or voir dire from defense counsel).
So it’s now 2011, and there’s still no reason for someone like Koon to believe that the courts have any problem with Hayne as a witness.
