COMMENTARY: "It's time to abolish the coroner," published by The Washington Post on his Blog 'The Watch' on December 12, 2107. (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.")
GIST: Once again, Radley Balko has written a commentary that defies reduction. But here is a clue, before I turn this illuminating piece over to the reader. "Two San Joaquin County, Calif., medical examiners have resigned in the
past two weeks, alleging that Sheriff-Coroner Steve Moore pressured
them to change their autopsy results for deaths in police custody. In
other instances also involving deaths at the hands of police, they say,
the sheriff ignored their conclusions completely. Bennet Omalu,
the chief medical examiner for the county, tendered his resignation on
Nov. 28, as did a colleague, Susan Parson. (Notable aside: Omalu is the
medical examiner who exposed the degenerative brain condition found in
many former NFL players and was the inspiration for the movie “Concussion.”)
Omalu was hired in 2007 to help professionalize and modernize the
county medical examiner’s office. In his resignation letter, he said
that Moore “has always made calculated attempts to control me as a
physician and influence my professional judgement.”........."To be sure, the states and cities that have adopted a
medical examiner system aren’t without their problems. Two big ones:
There are far too few certified medical examiners
for the number of autopsies that need to be done, and there isn’t
enough separation between medical examiners and law enforcement. But
these problems, while important, aren’t endemic to the medical examiner
systems. With some political will, they could be fixed, or at least
improved. The problems with the coroner system are more
fundamental. The very act of electing someone to determine manner of
death suggests that there’s room for political factors to guide or
influence that determination. That shouldn’t be something we encourage.
Put another way, we shouldn’t encourage the idea that there might be
a Democratic or Republican way to determine whether someone died
accidentally, committed suicide or was murdered. Instead, let’s
let each group of professionals do what they’re trained to do. Let
medical examiners determine the cause of death. In cases in which
a forensic pathologist has determined a death to be a homicide, let the
police then investigate. If there was indeed a crime, let officials look
for a suspect. If a suspect is arrested, let prosecutors determine the
appropriate charges. Of course, we do elect sheriffs and
prosecutors. Whether that’s a good idea is another debate. But it’s hard
to see what good comes from adding another elected office to all of
that — one that requires little to no specialized training. The
coroner system isn’t just an anachronism; it’s an anachronism that never
made much sense in the first place. It’s well past time to get rid of
it."