National standards recommend that most autopsy reports be completed within 60 days. Prosecutors in the Harbor case have been waiting a year. Across Mississippi, many families are waiting even longer. An Associated Press analysis based on government records and documents, as well as dozens of interviews with officials and residents, found that the Mississippi system has long operated in violation of national standards for death investigations, garnering a large number of autopsies and reports. . The autopsies that have to last for days take weeks. Autopsy reports that will take months will take a year or more, as in the case of Harbor. Very few physicians do too many autopsies. Some cases are transferred hundreds of miles to neighboring states for reports without the knowledge of their family. The Mississippi State Forensic Bureau has been waiting for about 1,300 reports since 2011, according to records sent to the AP in early April. About 800 of them are homicides – meaning criminal cases are not over. Prosecutors have waived long waits: “We are at a point now where we are happy if it is only one year,” said Luke Williamson, who has been a prosecutor in northern Mississippi for 14 years. The National Association of Medical Examiners, the U.S. accreditation bureau, says 90 percent of autopsy reports must be returned within 60 to 90 days. The Mississippi office has never been accredited. The majority of U.S. forensic services that have been underfunded for years and have a shortage of medical examiners are not accredited. States like Georgia have sounded the alarm for delays in autopsies for up to six months. But nowhere is the issue more serious than in Mississippi. Mississippi delays are a concern at the “emergency level,” said Dr. James Gill, president of the association for 2021 and leader of the American College of Physicians. “It’s a catastrophic situation where you have to do something drastic.” Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell is a former Mississippi Court of Appeals judge who took over his role – overseeing the state medical examiner’s office, the highway patrol and other services – in May 2020. He described the backlog as “unacceptable” and said it was his top priority of his administration. He said that while working as a judge, he saw trials being delayed while prosecutors awaited reports. “I knew it was bad,” he told the AP. “I did not know it was so bad. “Families deserve better. “I’m sorry that they had to deal with delays in lying down to rest their loved ones, to close in these cases, but we will fix the problem.” Tindell said he has a policy in place that all reports must be returned within 90 days. Using contractors in other states, the office began working to reduce backlog. Tindell said about 500 cases have been completed since the summer. But Tindell – who has hired two new doctors, started university recruitment efforts and streamlined staffing – said it was a challenge to try to fix old problems while facing new ones: the pandemic and an unprecedented rise in violent crime. Mississippi saw 597 homicides in 2021 and 578 in 2020 – record numbers for the state of 3 million. This compares to 434 in 2019 and 382 in 2018. Arkansas, with a similar population, had 347 homicides in 2021 and 386 in 2020. From 2020 to April 2022, Arkansas employed five to seven autopsies. Mississippi has been busy for two to three years as people quit their jobs. Tindell said both the forensic lab and the medical examiner’s office have not been a state priority for funding or staffing for more than a decade. The forensic laboratory’s budget has remained virtually unchanged since 2008. But during the Mississippi Legislature in 2022, lawmakers approved $ 4 million to be used to deal with pending cases. Like most states, Mississippi does not perform autopsies – a post-mortem surgery by a medical examiner to determine the cause of death – on all people. Autopsies are intended for homicides, suicides, deaths of children and those in prisons and other unexpected cases. Medical examiners are responsible for conducting autopsies at two Mississippi medical examiners – one in the Jackson Metro area and one on the coast. Following the autopsy, physicians complete a report explaining their findings and results, including the official cause of death. Reports can help determine if a death was an accident, suicide, or homicide. They shed light on child deaths or show whether a person accused of murder acted in self-defense. In 2017, 93-year-old World War II veteran Durley Bratton died after two employees of a Mississippi veterans’ home threw him and put him back to bed without telling anyone. Police launched an investigation following information from the hospital where Bratton was taken. The arrests were made just 15 months later, after the autopsy report was returned, concluding that the veteran had died of blunt force trauma. In the Harbor case, the autopsy report was the crucial evidence after Pace claimed self-defense for his wife’s shooting. At the December 2021 trial, where Pace was sentenced to life in prison, a medical examiner said Harbor suffered from blunt trauma that resulted in a beating before she was shot. Harbor, who helped deliver the babies as a surgeon at a local hospital, had endured months of abuse. He once went to a shelter for domestic violence. But she was worried for the safety of her children and never went to the police. Because Pace did not have a criminal record, he was released on bail days after his arrest. Harbor’s stepmother, Denise Spears, said she and her family felt frustrated as they went to the mailbox month after month to find notices that the trial was being postponed. As soon as the report came, the test was further delayed due to the pandemic. Pace was tried only three years after his wife was killed. One of the worst points was to explain to her grandchildren why the man who killed their mother was able to live free for years, Spears said. More than once, they came to her, fearing that they would meet him. “They could not understand it,” Spears said. “It was difficult for me to explain it to them, because I could not understand it either.” Ben Crickmore, a prosecutor in northern Mississippi, said discussions with families about delays are always difficult. Concerned about the impact of delays on confidence in the criminal justice system. “These things dramatically affect our relationship with people who have been lost,” he said. “It undermines your credibility in everything else.” In addition to the implications for criminal cases, the lack of an autopsy report and an official death certificate can prevent families from receiving benefits. Mississippi Lt. Gen. Delbert Hossemann said he has been contacted by families who cannot receive insurance payments without a certificate. “One who contacted us was a mom and two children whose husband died unexpectedly,” she said during an autumn budget hearing. “They could not get their life insurance benefits, and that was the only money they had.” More than money, families can also find closure. Rebecca Brown lost her brother unexpectedly in 2018. Only last June – three years after his death – was his report completed. Her brother, in his 40s, had a history of drug addiction but was recovering. He was staying with his mother, who was worried that he had started using it again and had died of an overdose. When they finally learned that the cause of death was a heart attack, Brown said she felt no relief – just anger that she had received so much. When she showed her mother a photo from the death certificate, she cried. “In my mind, what they did was call my mother to mourn for three more years than she could,” Brown said. Tindell said the problems would not be resolved until the state could hire more physicians. The standards of the National Association of Medical Examiners recommend that physicians perform no more than 250 autopsies per year. If physicians perform more than 325 per year, the office is in danger of losing accreditation. In 2021, two Mississippi physicians performed 461 and 421 autopsies. The six Arkansas physicians averaged about 282 each. For most of the 1990s and 2000s, Mississippi did not have a state medical examiner; instead, it had a contract with a private physician, Dr. Steven Hein, who performed 80% of the state autopsies. He did up to 1,700 autopsies a year. Hayne’s work has been repeatedly attacked in court as sloppy and scientifically unfounded. The verdicts in multiple murder cases in which Hayne testified were overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court. In 2011, the state hired the Pathologist Dr. Mark LeVaughn as his first Chief Medical Examiner since 1995. During his tenure, LeVaughn has repeatedly spoken publicly about lack of resources, describing his practice as an extremely inadequate personal risk to public health. Tindell said a significant number of pending autopsy reports are by LeVaughn. Due to the turnover rate of the department, LeVaughn was the only medical examiner to handle all autopsies in the state from time to time and lag behind in the bureaucracy. “They put him in the impossible position to try to do all the autopsies for the whole state and unfortunately he failed to do everything” …
