Extremely information and very depressing. 

I hadn't known John Grisham's political affiliations prior to reading this book and it's forward. I guess I just assumed that because a lot of the readers I know who like him are conservative, that he is as well. After reading about his work with the innocence project in the forward to this book, and the references to cases that inspired some of his fiction, I'm interested in reading something by him. Hayne and West committed innumerable, unforgivable violence against the people of Mississippi. They created and took part in a cult-like system that revered their expertise while reveling in a cognitive dissonance created by their lack of certification. The fact that pay to play adjacent certification programs exist and are accepted as certification for coroners; that coroners weren't/aren't required in some states to be certified by a central agency or program, and the fact that the political roadblocks to overturning wrongful convictions are so strongly upheld by the insular and corrupt nature of law enforcement are incredibly upsetting. This book puts the popular police procedural dramas into a different perspective. The cowboys of law enforcement doing what it takes to get a conviction of the person they fundamentally believe committed a crime takes on a far more sinister reality in the light of how many innocent people were wrongfully convicted based off of the opinions and beliefs of poorly trained/racist/bigoted police officers, which we're upheld by a corrupt coroner and court system.