PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Congrats to lawyers Rosario Vega Lynn and Diane Garrity who had to fight so hard so to clear the record on how the prominent civil rights attorney died - in spite of a wall of resistance at every step of the way from the police and prosecutorial authorities. This matter should not end here. In light of Judge Thomson's decision, the state should order a public inquiry into the cover-up surrounding the terribly flawed investigation of Mary Han's death - and the officer's responsible should be held accountable for their misconduct.'' There are still far too many unanswered questions.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "The degree and extent of the collusion and obscuring of truth by the (OMI) and the (APD) will never be known, but at least the medical investigator’s office has been held accountable for their decisions and must – from this point forward – justify the bases for their decisions,” Rosario Vega Lynn and Garrity, Wallbro’s attorneys, said in a prepared statement."
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Paul Kennedy, Han’s former law partner, found Han dead in a car parked in the garage of her North Valley Albuquerque home in November 2010. OMI’s report of death concluded Han died by inhaling carbon monoxide in a closed garage. The cause was ruled as a suicide. In court filings, Han’s sister said she had spoken with Mary Han the night before her body was found and she didn’t seem out of character. Han also had plans to visit her only child the week after her death, and no note indicating suicide was found. Wallbro’s petition alleged that the police failed to test carbon monoxide levels inside Han’s home, her fingernails for DNA evidence and some of the items found at the scene of her death, such as a glass of liquid thought to be vodka. It also questioned why no attempt was made to explain why she was found inside a car that wasn’t running and no neighbors were interviewed. Those were just some of the problems with Albuquerque police’s investigation into her death, according to court documents.There were also questions about the thoroughness of OMI’s autopsy, said Diane Garrity, one of Wallbro’s attorneys. Thomson’s ruling said while some responding Albuquerque police officers tried to follow proper protocols, the scene was “overrun for some unknown reason by other responding individuals both civilian and supervisors at APD.”
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STORY: "Judge orders OMI (New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator) to change attorney’s death certificate," by reporter Ryan Boetel, published by The Albuquerque Journal on August 15, 2018.
GIST: "In
a rare move, a state District Court judge has ordered the New Mexico
Office of the Medical Investigator to change its conclusion about the
manner of death of a prominent Albuquerque attorney from “suicide” to
“undetermined.” First Judicial District Judge David Thomson in
Santa Fe ruled, in part, that the Albuquerque Police Department’s
investigation into the death of attorney Mary Han was so flawed that OMI
couldn’t reach a conclusion of suicide and should make changes to her
death certificate. The judge said OMI’s conclusion was “arbitrary and
capricious.” Alex
Sanchez, a spokeswoman for the University of New Mexico Health Sciences
Center, which OMI is a part of, said the agency disagreed with the
judge’s ruling and is considering an appeal. Thomson’s ruling was in response to a non-jury trial held back in January 2017. Elizabeth Wallbro, Han’s sister, had brought a petition for a writ of mandamus seeking to have the manner of death changed. Wallbro’s
attorneys said that more than 50 police officers and upper-level city
and Albuquerque police officials turned the death scene into a “surreal
circus,” in which high-ranking officials trooped through Han’s home,
drank water in the kitchen, used her bathroom and handled items in her
home instead of preserving evidence. Han on many occasions during her career had filed lawsuits against the police department. “Due
to the contamination of the scene and the loss of critical evidence,
even under the most deferential standard, there is no basis for (OMI’s)
determination of the manner of death,” Thomson wrote in his 96-page
opinion filed Wednesday. “Simply put, the evidence needed to make this
determination was spoiled by the acts of the investigating agency.” But
Sanchez said in a prepared statement: “We have the highest respect for
the court but disagree with the judge’s ruling in this case. Our experts
conducted a complete and thorough investigation into Ms. Han’s death
and we stand by the autopsy determination that Ms. Han died as a result
of a suicide.” Paul Kennedy, Han’s former law partner, found Han
dead in a car parked in the garage of her North Valley Albuquerque home
in November 2010. OMI’s report of death concluded Han died by inhaling carbon monoxide in a closed garage. The cause was ruled as a suicide. In
court filings, Han’s sister said she had spoken with Mary Han the night
before her body was found and she didn’t seem out of character. Han also had plans to visit her only child the week after her death, and no note indicating suicide was found. Wallbro’s
petition alleged that the police failed to test carbon monoxide levels
inside Han’s home, her fingernails for DNA evidence and some of the
items found at the scene of her death, such as a glass of liquid thought
to be vodka. It also questioned why no attempt was made to explain why
she was found inside a car that wasn’t running and no neighbors were
interviewed. Those were just some of the problems with Albuquerque police’s investigation into her death, according to court documents. There were also questions about the thoroughness of OMI’s autopsy, said Diane Garrity, one of Wallbro’s attorneys. Thomson’s
ruling said while some responding Albuquerque police officers tried to
follow proper protocols, the scene was “overrun for some unknown reason
by other responding individuals both civilian and supervisors at APD.” “The
degree and extent of the collusion and obscuring of truth by the (OMI)
and the (APD) will never be known, but at least the medical
investigator’s office has been held accountable for their decisions and
must – from this point forward – justify the bases for their decisions,”
Rosario Vega Lynn and Garrity, Wallbro’s attorneys, said in a prepared
statement. Garrity said there have been few cases in which judges
have ordered OMI to make changes to a death certificate. She said the
case is important because it shows families they have a way to challenge
OMI if they disagree with the office’s findings. Garrity said the experts who testified at trial believe that the manner of Han’s death will never be conclusive. “The
experts believe that the crime scene was so contaminated and the
contamination was so acute that we’ll probably never be able to say
conclusively what happened,” she said.
The entire story can be read at:
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.abqjournal.com/1209248/judge-orders-lawyer-mary-hans-death-to-be-changed-to-undetermined.html
For background, read the earlier story from the Albuquerque Journal - Famed pathologist questions Han ruling - (reporter Joline Guttierez Krueger) at the link below (August 5, 2015): "Last month, famed forensic pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz, who has made a laudable living off the dead for more than 62 years, offered his thoughts on the investigation into the death of prominent civil rights attorney Mary Han in Albuquerque nearly five years ago. Spitz co-wrote “Medicolegal Investigation of Death,” the bible of forensic pathology, now in its 20th printing. His expertise has been sought in dozens of high-profile cases from the assassination of President Kennedy to the murder trials of O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony. And now, it had been sought by the Han family. His opinion was stunning. “It is evident that the investigation was cursory, superficial and incomplete, both by the medical investigator and the police,” Spitz wrote in a letter dated July 24 to Rosario Vega Lynn, the Han family’s attorney. “Under the circumstances, I firmly believe that this case should be reopened, re-examined and re-evaluated.” Which is what many – including two other medical experts, former Attorney General Gary King and yours truly – have been saying almost since that gut-kicking afternoon when Han was found dead Nov. 18, 2010, in her car parked in the garage at her North Valley townhouse. The state Office of the Medical Investigator deemed her death a suicide by carbon monoxide intoxication, but few who had known the fearless, feisty, 53-year-old Han believed she had taken her own life. There were just too many questions unanswered, too much left undone by the agencies that should have sought those answers. A lawsuit filed by the Han family in November 2012 against the city of Albuquerque and various personnel contends that the Albuquerque Police Department – an agency Han had sued for millions of dollars – failed to conduct a thorough and appropriate investigation into her death and allowed dozens of high-ranking police and city officials to tromp around her home, destroying evidence and leading the OMI astray. U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Carmen Garza dismissed the lawsuit in August 2014, ruling that there is “no fundamental right under the Constitution to know the cause of a family member’s death.” Garza also ruled that a dead person’s civil rights cannot be violated, that the family had not shown Han’s civil rights were violated before she died, nor had the civil rights of the family members been violated. And the family, Garza said, had not identified the wrongful act that caused Han’s death. The case remains under appeal, split into two portions now before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and state District Court in Albuquerque. Perhaps the worst indignity argued at the heart of these legal actions is the label of suicide when even the OMI has acknowledged that the investigation into Han’s death was incomplete at best. “The report certainly identified shortcomings in the original scene investigation and difficulties getting full information about some of the circumstances surrounding the death,” then-chief medical investigator Dr. Ross Zumwalt wrote in a letter dated Dec. 13, 2013, to the Attorney General’s Office. Zumwalt’s letter came four months after the AG had released its own scathing report on the Han investigation, calling it “terribly mishandled” and contending that suicide was a mischaracterization. But Zumwalt refused to change Han’s manner of death from suicide to “undetermined,” saying that suicide was still proper “within reasonable medical probability.” Zumwalt and his successor, Dr. Kurt Nolte, have repeatedly rebuffed efforts to change the manner of death. A formal appeal from the Han family in August 2011 went unanswered. The OMI was also unmoved by the opinions, which were requested by the Han family, of Georgia Chief Medical Examiner Kris Sperry in 2012; Dr. David Williams, a board-certified emergency room physician with the Heart Hospital of New Mexico, in 2015; and Spitz this July, who in his letter to the Han family attorney called the suicide determination a “rush to judgment.” So on Monday the Han family filed a petition asking the court to compel the OMI to conduct a “fair, accurate, professional and impartial investigation into Ms. Han’s true cause and manner of death and to provide an accurate death certification.” The petition, filed in the 1st Judicial Court in Santa Fe because the OMI is a state agency, makes a number of allegations against the OMI, including that its field personnel did not communicate with first responders, who had identified Han’s home as a possible crime scene; that it failed to investigate the contents of Han’s laptop found in her car; failed to interview Han’s longtime law partner, Paul Kennedy, who found Han dead; failed to test the clear liquid found in a glass in the car or test the air for carbon monoxide; failed to collect medication found in the home or collect evidence and DNA that might have been found under her fingernails or on her body; and failed to contact an expert on whether Han’s car had a carbon monoxide sensor. Nolte, named chief medical investigator in January, did not respond to a request to discuss the Han case, but John Arnold, a spokesman with the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, under which the OMI operates, offered this: “OMI strives to conduct a fair and accurate investigation for every case it reviews. This case is no exception. We have not been served with the petition, so cannot comment on it specifically.” The noble cause of a forensic pathologist is to seek the truth, says the foreword to Spitz’s seminal “Medicolegal Investigation of Death.” That requires the pathologist to “abandon rhetoric, ancient dogma and fictive contentions in favor of finding and presenting fact.” The facts in Han’s death appear to be irretrievably lost, the truth forever out of reach. Surely it’s time the OMI found the guts to say so and change its report."
The entire story can be read at the link below:
https://www.abqjournal.com/623309/famed-pathologist-questions-han-ruling-says-case-should-be-reopened.html?utm_source=abqjournal.com&utm_medium=related+posts+-+default&utm_campaign=related+posts
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
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