The Mississippi medical examiner’s office is a mess.
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There’s one agency that should have answers in the mysterious death of Billey Joe Johnson Jr.: the Mississippi medical examiner’s office.
Its autopsy should be able to say how the football star ended up dead after being pulled over by police. Was it suicide? Was it an accident? Was it a homicide?
The Mississippi medical examiner’s office, however, is a mess. There actually was no state medical examiner at the time, so the state had to find someone else to do the work.
But, as we explore in Chapter 3 of our serial investigation ([link removed]) into Johnson’s death, the problems with the medical examiner’s office go back way further.
This episode opens in the 1950s with the story of the Rev. George Lee, a civil rights leader who was assassinated by White supremacists as he campaigned for voting rights for Black Mississippians. Local authorities tried to cover it up, saying Lee died of a heart attack and the bullet wounds in him were lead from his teeth fillings.
We start there because I really wanted to draw a direct line between what has happened in America’s past and what happened in Johnson’s case. This is all about looking at the systems that are the foundations that we use today.
In the decades after Lee's case, the state has tried to reform how it handles death investigations. But its legacy remains.
I’d love it if you gave Chapter 3 ([link removed]) a listen. And if you haven’t started the series yet, be sure to go back to Chapters 1 and 2 ([link removed]) before you dig in.
Light,
Al Letson
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