The D.C. medical examiner’s office has lost its national accreditation because the agency’s chief lacks board certification, weakening the prosecution of criminal cases in court and potentially keeping the agency from moving into the city’s $220 million forensics lab set to open next year, city officials said. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is tasked with conducting autopsies in homicide cases. It also does the urine analysis for suspected drunk drivers in the District ?– the only means available for testing blood-alcohol levels as the city works to revive its alcohol breath-test program, which was shut down in February 2010 because the police department poorly calibrated the equipment.
Now that the long-troubled agency has lost its accreditation, defense attorneys can more easily attack in court the evidence that comes out of the office.
“It does make the government prosecution of criminal cases more difficult,” said at-large D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson, whose committee oversees the medical examiner’s office. “It’s another issue a defense attorney can raise during trial.”
Without accreditation, the medical examiner also won’t be able to move into the new crime lab, he said.
“We want everything accredited that goes into the lab,” Mendelson said.
The medical examiner’s office did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
At issue is Chief Medical Examiner Marie Pierre-Louis’ board certification. She doesn’t have it and has been out of school too long to get it. The National Association of Medical Examiners granted the District its first-ever accreditation in 2008 on a provisional basis. NAME told the city in letters sent at the time that the chief examiner needed board certification before the office could receive permanent accreditation. The provisional accreditation lasted only a year.
In 2009, though, the agency received a one-year extension. A request for another one-year extension was made in September 2010. It was denied because “the qualification of the Chief Medical Examiner has not changed,” NAME told the city in a Feb. 25 letter. A final appeal was denied in March.
Mendelson said he is “upset” with NAME for creating a “contradictory situation.”
But it was the D.C. Council that waived a D.C. requirement for the chief medical examiner to be board-certified when it first approved Pierre-Louis to fill out Jonathan Arden’s term in 2003. Arden was forced out of office after Pierre-Louis and four other then-deputy examiners complained he was sexually harassing them. The council again waived the requirement for board certification in May 2007, when it approved Pierre-Louis for a six-year term.
Police union chief Kris Baumann said the council should have foreseen the issue.
“The medical examiner is often overlooked, but it plays a critically important role,” Baumann said. “It deals with high-profile and high-liability issues.”
