"Medical investigators ruled Mary Han's death a suicide, but now a Santa Fe judge says that could change. Han was a well-known civil rights attorney who was found dead
in her garage in November 2010. Medical investigators ruled it a
suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, but her family has always said Han
would never kill herself. Now five years later, they're still trying to officially change Han's death certificate to say "undetermined." "Suicide is not supported by fact," said the family's lawyer, Rosario Vega Lynn. Han's
family took their fight to a Santa Fe District Court judge Wednesday.
They want him to order the state Medical Investigator's Office to redo
its investigation into Han's death, claiming the office did not do a
thorough enough job the first time around. "They just accepted everything that APD officials told them to be true, and then they arrived at suicide," said Vega Lynn. Han's
family isn't the first to ask that Han's death certificate be changed.
At the time of her death, then-Attorney General Gary King also thought
it should be labeled as undetermined. "One of the reasons that we
asked OMI to look at this again was the quality of the police
investigation was horrible," said former general counsel R. David
Pederson... But lawyers for OMI insisted they did a thorough and
independent investigation. They wanted the judge to dismiss the family's
petition to reopen the case. "They didn't like the investigation -- that's it. And there's nothing more to it," said attorney Paul Melendres..."We should be able, as citizens, to demand that our state agencies do their jobs," said Vega Lynn."
