Criminal justice. Dead and Waiting

• Author: Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi
• Pages: 18-19

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Dead and Waiting

A national shortage of forensic pathologists, coupled with COVID-19,

has caused major delays in cases

BY EMILIE LE BEAU LUCCHESI

In May 2019, a married man was

worried that his lover was going

to tell his wife about their affair.

He entered her home and shot her

in the head while she slept.

The victim, Dominique Clayton,

was a mother of four children. Her

8-year-old son found her body when the

children returned from a weekend with

their uncle.

Within a day, police in Oxford,

Mississippi, learned the victim was in

a relationship with Matthew Kinne,

a member of their department. Kinne

was arrested, red from the force, and

a grand jury indicted him on a capital

murder charge.

Kinne pleaded not guilty, and both

the prosecution and the defense needed

the autopsy report to complete the

discovery process.

“No defense lawyer in their right

mind could go forward with the defense

of a capital murder charge where the

death penalty was on the table without

an autopsy report,” said Tony Farese,

Kinne’s defense attorney and president

of Farese, Farese, & Farese in Ashland,

Mississippi.

The nalized autopsy report took

more than two years to complete. When

it was released, the defense realized it

was too risky to go to trial. In a deal

with prosecutors last July, Kinne agreed

to plead guilty and accept life in prison

without parole.

Mississippi, like most U.S. states,

is experiencing a forensic pathologist

shortage.

Although autopsies are performed

in a timely manner out of necessity,

reports are taking months—and in

some instances years—to nalize. For

example, Carolyn Green, the coroner

for Mississippi’s Lee County, said in

October that one natural death from

2016 still doesn’t have a nalized au-

topsy report.

The pandemic—which also precip-

itated a backlog in cases—has only

exacerbated the shortage. In the last

two years, forensic pathologists across

the country also have been burdened by

COVID-19 deaths, a spike in homicides

and an increase in accidental drug

overdoses.

With the time between the autop-

sy and the nalized report stretching

months or even years, both prosecutors

and defense attorneys are waiting lon-

ger than usual to bring criminal cases to

trial, raising due process concerns.

Shortage

The forensic pathologist shortage has

been decades in the making, building

since the practice became board-

certied in 1959.

Few medical school graduates choose

pathology residencies, and even few-

er opt to work in forensic pathology,

where the pay is lower than in other

practice areas.

There are currently 500 board-cer-

tied forensic pathologists working

full time. These pathologists are tasked

with determining the cause of death

for anyone who does not die in a

hospital or in hospital cases involving

homicide, according to Dr. James Gill,

chief medical examiner for the state of

Connecticut. Gill is also chair of the

National Association of Medical Exam-

iners’ board of directors and the group’s

immediate-past president.

In a normal year, Gill says, the

U.S. has needed more than double the

number of forensic pathologists to keep

up with the number of cases sent to

their ofces. Increasing cases in the past

two years have only made the prob-

lem worse.

National Pulse edited by

BLAIR CHAVIS & LIANE JACKSON

blair.chavis@americanbar.org

liane.jackson@americanbar.org

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