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Mistakes Plague Tenn. Medical Examiner |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Saturday, 07 May 2005 |
By BILL POOVEY
April 30, 2005
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- In the decades that Dr. Charles Harlan has performed autopsies and testified in court as an expert on death, the complaints have piled up: tampering with evidence, incompetence, bizarre personal behavior.
Asked for an official confirmation that someone had died, he once sent a bank gruesome details about decomposition. A tenant renting a house from him found a jar of body parts in the laundry room and tissue samples stored in a chocolate box.
James Suttle spent five months behind bars because Harlan said he fatally stabbed his cousin.
"I'm sure there are some people sitting in that penitentiary because of him, because of his mess-ups," said Suttle, who won acquittal after spending thousands on his defense.
This past month, after two years of hearings, the state found Harlan guilty of 20 counts of misconduct and permanently revoked his medical license _ the first time in anyone's memory that has happened to a medical examiner.
"I've been doing it 26 years, and I haven't had a member yet had their license revoked," said Denise McNally, director of the Atlanta-based National Association of Medical Examiners.
One county medical examiner in New Jersey, Dr. Elliot Gross, didn't lose his medical license even though his work in a 2001 investigation led to a police officer being wrongly charged with killing his wife. Gross, a former medical examiner in New York and Connecticut, was censured by the state, but he continues working in the field.
Harlan, 57, can continue to perform autopsies through his company, Forensic Pathology Associates Inc. in Nashville, as long as he doesn't sign reports as a doctor.
And he can continue testifying in court: The day after his license was revoked, Harlan testified about a fatal gunshot in a murder trial.
Harlan turned down requests for an interview, but his attorney, Dan Warlick, said the complaints stem from a feud started by Dr. Bruce Levy, Harlan's successor as state medical examiner.
Levy was the state's chief witness against Harlan but said he had nothing to do with the charges or the board's decision.
Among the complaints against Harlan was one from 1999, when a family needed to have a confirmation of death notice sent to a bank. Harlan responded by faxing a piece of paper with a short message: "M.L. is dead." After a request for more information, he faxed another note: "M.L. is dead. She is green and has maggots crawling on her."
Investigators also said a woman renting a house owned by Harlan found body parts in a jar and tissue samples in a chocolate box. Levy said the woman also found case files and crime scene photographs in the house.
In 1994, Harlan resigned as medical examiner for metro Nashville after three female employees sued him for sexual harassment. He pleaded no-contest in 2002 after being charged with putting a tracking device on the car of a former female employee.
Harlan's lawyer, Warlick, said forensic pathologists as a group are different because they work odd hours with poor funding and deal with human tragedy on a daily basis.
"They are all eccentric," Warlick said. "These are not the kind of physicians who become family practitioners or millionaire specialists."
But the charges against Harlan were about more than mere eccentricity. The state proved that he botched several autopsies that were part of criminal investigations.
Suttle blames sloppy work for the murder charges against him.
While visiting friends and relatives in Pulaski in 1999, Suttle spent a night with cousin Steve Hobbs. During the night, Hobbs staggered through the house and fell backward onto a glass-top coffee table.
Suttle's lawyer, Paul Bruno, said Harlan looked at the victim's back, "then he called the investigators and said you have a homicide, you have a stab wound to the back. And that call was made prior to him conducting an autopsy."
The defense eventually showed that a rib Hobbs broke in a fight about a week before his death had punctured a lung, causing internal bleeding that triggered a seizure.
Suttle sued Harlan for damages, but a judge dismissed the case, saying Harlan acted in good faith.
Now the question is whether lifting Harlan's medical license will open the state up to appeals by people who were convicted on his testimony.
His attorney, Warlick, said there were "people out there sitting in prison waiting to see if Dr. Harlan is incompetent. The state better be careful what it wishes for. Dr. Harlan isn't incompetent."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR2005043000506.html |
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