Comments on: And Then There Were Eight

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 21 Feb 2016 01:39:16 +0000

In addition to passing through Texas, I lived in Wichita Falls [Sheppard AFB], San Antonio [Lackland AFB], and San Angelo [Goodfellow AFB]. San Angelo is north of Presidio County. We used to go down to Ciudad Acuña across from Del Rio a lot because there wasn’t much going on in San Angelo if you were in the Air Force.

The ranch had a private airport and aircraft, in fact they flew Scalia’s body to a funeral home in El Paso to be prepared for shipment to Washington.

Most Veterinarian’s offices have the facilities to perform a competent autopsy. The vet wouldn’t do it, but any surgeon could, because you would only need to take pictures, x-rays, and targeted samples (liver, heart, blood, stomach contents), but as his personal physician didn’t think he was strong enough to have surgery to correct a problem with his shoulder, natural causes was ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. All of the samples would have to be sent out for testing, whether they were gathered by local doctor or a board certified pathologist. Truth be told, my vet has better facilities than the Medical Examiner that was responsible for the area of New York I was in.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sat, 20 Feb 2016 08:43:27 +0000

I’ve been in the towns you mentioned fairly recently. None of them have a hospital with a full surgical suite or facilities or personnel for performing an autopsy. Some of them barely have any people — there are more people staying in the hotel rooms in Van Horn than actually live there. The closest medical examiner to Brewster County where Scalia died is going to be El Paso, TX, or Odessa, TX, both about 3 1/2 hours away — and note that there is not a single hospital in Brewster County and the surrounding counties have only tiny community hospitals that do outpatient and emergency surgery only, so no place to conduct an autopsy there so you’d have to ship the body to El Paso or Odessa and pay them cash money to do the autopsy. Which the JP will do if it seems necessary, but in this case it wasn’t.

I repeat: There’s a whole lot of nothing between El Paso and San Antonio…

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 21:24:45 +0000

Between San Antonio and El Paso there is Van Horn which is on the dividing line between Central and Mountain time and has a U-Haul truck rental location. There is Sierra Blanca which has a handy railway station that makes it easy to load a Datsun 2000 in the back of a U-Haul truck. There is Fort Stockton with the worse water in the West – so hard you can drive nails or clog water heaters at motels owned and operated by Canadians instead of the Eastern Indian owned motels you start seeing in New Mexico. Of course I rarely go into San Antonio, using the cut-off through New Braunfels to avoid it. I have driven to and from Florida and California several times, usually in about 3 days.

Texas has more trust in personal physicians than New York. In New York 95% of the people live on 5% of the land. There are large forests, huge Native American reservations, a whole lot of farms for dairy cattle, poultry, green beans, sweet corn, apples, cherries, etc. It can be more than 5 hours to a large city, which is why in the Adironacks they use regional facilities. There are remote military bases in the mountains with access by helicopter or 6X6 trucks. It is easier to get there by snowmobile in the winter than any other way. Generally they have radars on the tops of mountains.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 19:47:59 +0000

Bryan, that’s why the Texas law requires an inquest to find cause of death and that inquest talks to the deceased’s personal physician to find out whether the deceased had ebola, SARS, MERS, or etc. prior to death. But someone dies at home quietly of old age (usually heart failure or stroke)? They aren’t going to contract out an autopsy for that.

In West Texas, if they wanted mutual aid from the nearest metropolitan area, that could be 5 hours away. Texas is *BIG*. Between El Paso and San Antonio is a whole lot of nothing.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 19:43:34 +0000

New York has MEs in all of the major counties and mutual assistance agreements among counties that are too sparsely populated to have their own facility. It is more of a public health than a law enforcement concern. That unattended death could be Ebola, SARS, MERS, or a lot of other infectious diseases, so the public health people want it investigated. States with low population density don’t have the history with those problems. Medical examiners are independent of law enforcement, despite what they show on TV.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 07:52:10 +0000

Note that there are Texas counties who have an actual coroner’s office staffed with actual medical examiners. But this county near Big Bend National Park is too small to have a full-time coroner. They would have had to pull in a contractor from outside the county to do an actual autopsy, which undoubtedly has something to do with why they didn’t press the issue, because that would have blown a big hole in their budget.

Applicable Texas code is CR.49.

Basically:
1) If the person died w/o an attending physician, the JP must hold an inquest to determine cause of death. This doesn’t mean he has to hold an actual formal hearing, that depends on whether there is sufficient doubt as to cause of death to need one. But he must ask questions of the family, the deceased’s personal physician, law enforcement, and whoever found the body.
2) Need for an autopsy is determined by the JP based upon whether the death was unusual, an autopsy is needed for possible criminal prosecution, or it is not possible to determine cause of death. If the cause of death is obvious after talking with law enforcement, family and the deceased’s physician, the Texas code doesn’t authorize him to order an autopsy. See Art. 49.10. He would need the family’s permission in that circumstance.

In this case the death was not unusual and there’s nothing criminal about the death. The cause is pretty obvious, dude either stroked out or infarc’ed out given his multitude of health issues and his age. Thus JP found at end of inquest that the cause of death was natural causes. The family doesn’t want an autopsy, and there’s nothing unusual to force an autopsy. So the only way there would be an autopsy would be if there was a violation of the rights under Texas law of the deceased’s family by doing it against their will.

New York State law sounds pretty expensive. Most people die at home in West Texas because the hospitals are a long ways away from home and people are dead long before an ambulance can arrive. Sparsely populated West Texas counties certainly couldn’t afford to contract out a medical examiner every time someone died at home, they’d need to start printing money if that happened to pay for all the autopsies between costs of transporting bodies to and from facilities properly equipped to conduct an autopsy and contracting with a ME to do it…

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 17:06:57 +0000

Apparently in Texas a justice-of-the-peace acts as the coroner, and the JP in this instance sought the advice of local law enforcement, the personal physician, and the family. In New York there would have been an autopsy as it is required for all deaths which occur with no physician in attendance at the time of death. Every state is different, and a lot of states don’t require the individual making the decision on autopsy or cause of death to be either a physician or a lawyer. In many states funeral directors serve as coroners.

I assume just from seeing pictures that he was ripe for an aneurysm which would be called a stroke if it was in the brain or a heart attack if the vessel was to the heart. Anybody in their 70s that overweight with a face that florid was on a downhill slide.

As long as Dick “Dick” Cheney isn’t part of your hunting party it is probably relatively safe 😉

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 05:00:38 +0000

My understanding is that the Sheriff asked the family if they wanted an autopsy, and the family said no — not Scalia’s personal physician. Scalia’s personal physician agreed that with Scalia’s age and heart problems there was no need for an autopsy, but that’s all the say he had in the matter. In the end, it’s a family decision to have an autopsy or not if there’s no sign of foul play.

I would imagine that a US Marshal protection team would get a bit twitchy with guns going off all around them on a hunting trip :). Undoubtedly Scalia had been there, done that, and really, can you imagine any safer place for a conservative Justice than on a hunting ranch surrounded by fellow conservatives with guns?

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 00:43:24 +0000

In reply to Badtux. Unanswered questions: why did Scalia refuse a US Marshal protection team? Why did his personal physician refuse an autopsy? Where was Dick "Dick" Cheney?

By: Badtux

Badtux — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 21:35:36 +0000

The coverup apparently includes Scalia’s own family, because they refused to allow an autopsy and in the state of Texas, the county coroner cannot order an autopsy without the family’s permission unless there’s evidence that a crime was committed. Why did Scalia’s own family hate Scalia so much that they want to cover up his murder? 😉