PASSAGE OF THE DAY: ""The Onondaga County Medical Examiner, Dr. Erik Mitchell, agreed to resign today after a prosecutor's investigation concluded that he had overstepped his authority and mismanaged his office. Among other things, prosecutors found that Dr. Mitchell routinely removed organs from corpses without the consent of the victims' families and improperly stored skeletons and body parts in his office." Publisher's Note: This report reminded me of a story on Charles Smith's disgusting office at the Hospital for Sick Children which my former Toronto Star colleague and friendTheresa Boyle wrote on December 18, 2007, during the Goudge Inquiry into many of Charles Smith's cases: As Theresa wrote in part: "The province called the inquiry earlier this year after it was discovered Smith made serious errors in 20 child-death investigations, including 12 in which parents and caregivers were criminally convicted. When asked yesterday by Robert Centa, assistant counsel for the commission, if she found anything unexpected during her search of Smith's office, Johnson replied: "There were some tissues that were, you know, dried out in plastic containers. There were some, just some skeletal bones in another little dish." Johnson went on to say she discovered a small wrist band, the kind that children at the hospital are given each time they undergo a procedure. Smith, once deemed one of the top pediatric forensic pathologists in the country, conducted autopsies on children at the hospital as part of his work." This is the same former Dr. Charles Smith who\brought his 11-year-old son to the exhumation of the remains of an 11-month-old 'grandson' who had died suddenly about nineteen months earlier after bumping his head while playing under a table, to the family's horror.
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STORY: New York Region Syracuse Medical Examiner agrees to quit after Inquiry, by The Associated Press, published by The New York Times, on November 20, 2023.
GIST: "The Onondaga County Medical Examiner, Dr. Erik Mitchell, agreed to resign today after
a prosecutor's investigation concluded that he had overstepped his authority and mismanaged his office.
Among other things, prosecutors found that Dr. Mitchell routinely removed organs from corpses without the consent of the victims' families and improperly stored skeletons and body parts in his office.
Dr. Mitchell, 42, resigned as chief Medical Examiner effective immediately and will leave the Medical Examiner's office effective Jan. 15, 1994, said his lawyer, Sidney Cominsky. County Executive Nicholas Pirro said he was ready to dismiss Dr. Mitchell if he did not resign.
Dr. Mitchell is admitting no wrongdoing, Mr. Cominsky said. "He is admitting only that it is impossible for him to run the office in the present climate," the lawyer said.
Dr. Mitchell has been the county Medical Examiner for 10 years. Over the last year, he has come under intense criticism because of accusations by current and former employees that he engaged in unethical, unprofessional and illegal activities.
District Attorney William Fitzpatrick announced today that a four-month investigation by his office corroborated many of the allegations.
But rather than pursue criminal charges against Dr. Mitchell, Mr. Fitzpatrick said he recommended to Mr. Pirro that Dr. Mitchell resign.
In return, Mr. Fitzpatrick agreed to close his investigation.
The District Attorney said Dr. Mitchell's conduct violated public health statutes but that vagueness of those laws made prosecution difficult. A number of the incidents could not be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired, he said.
"I don't want to create the impression that Dr. Mitchell is guilty of a crime. I am not saying that," Mr. Fitzpatrick said. "That is only for a jury to decide.”
Mr. Fitzpatrick said the outcome was a fair one, noting that Dr. Mitchell cooperated with his investigation.
"I have never known the man to be motivated by any thought save that of the safety and health of the people, but he went too far," Mr. Fitzpatrick said. "An autopsy patient is not the personal property of the doctor."
Other Investigations Continue
Dr. Mitchell remains under investigation by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the Health Department and the Office of Professional Medical Conduct.
Dr. Mitchell was not available for comment today.
Mr. Cominsky said Dr. Mitchell was "the victim of a tremendous amount of accusation and slander." Dr. Mitchell has a $3 million slander lawsuit pending against one of his accusers.
The District Attorney began investigating Dr. Mitchell when it was revealed that a man convicted of child pornography had photographs taken of himself with a corpse in the Medical Examiner's office.
Mr. Fitzpatrick said not only was the man not authorized to be in the morgue, but that he helped a former morgue employee, Joseph Contrera, stitch up the corpse after an autopsy.
Mr. Contrera is serving a prison term for molesting young boys.
The District Attorney also found that morgue employees took photographs of one another in playful poses over the body of a female suicide victim and that they provided the pathology department at University Hospital in Syracuse with bladders and kidneys from about 150 bodies, often without family consent.
At a separate news conference today, Mr. Pirro announced the termination of Dr. Mitchell's two chief assistants to try to restore public confidence in the Medical Examiner's office.
The Cayuga County Coroner, Dr. Janice Ross, was appointed interim Medical Examiner."
The entire story can be read at:
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
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