Keep Sheriff, Coroner Offices Combined, County Report Advises

A new report on one of the county’s most-studied offices recommends keeping the combined Sheriff-Coroner Department but suggests the hiring of a forensic pathologist to cut costs.

The report by the county administrative office, made public Thursday, also endorses the current practice of having a coroner’s review committee investigate certain deaths rather than holding public inquests.

The coroner’s bureau investigates all violent, sudden and unusual deaths in the county, determining their circumstances and cause.

“Overall, satisfaction with the existing organization, the professionalism and expertise of the staff, and the thoroughness of investigations was cited repeatedly by the organizations contacted during the course of this review,” the report says.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors, which will consider the report Tuesday, ordered a review of the combined department two years ago, when the board voted to keep the sheriff’s and coroner’s jobs consolidated but to have the district attorney handle investigations of deaths in which a police officer was involved or which occurred while a person was in police custody.

Grand juries and other agencies that have studied the combined operation over the years have noted the possibility of conflicts of interest if the coroner investigates a death involving a sheriff’s deputy, or one that occurred in County Jail, run by the Sheriff’s Department, since the coroner and the sheriff are the same person.

But since the district attorney and sheriff put in writing two years ago the procedure to be followed in officer-involved or in-custody deaths, 19 such cases have been investigated, “and the cause, manner and mode of death established without significant controversy,” the report says.

The review also notes that Orange County remains the only major metropolitan county in the state to have retained the combined system, and says that the time may yet come to change it.

“The county’s evolutionary process as a major metropolitan area will necessitate regular re-evaluation of the appropriateness and effectiveness of a system that is traditionally associated with smaller, more rural counties,” the report said.

Last year, Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) introduced legislation to transform the sheriff-district attorney agreement into law, but it was killed in committee.

Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates, who opposed Ferguson’s bill and has always battled against the splitting of his office, on Thursday called the report from the county administrative office “extremely accurate.”

“It’s what we’ve been saying for 12 years, and I’m glad to see it being substantiated very thoroughly,” Gates said.

The report says that when someone dies in police custody or in an incident involving police, the district attorney’s office investigates, selects a pathologist to perform the autopsy and opens the process to grand jurors and other “appropriate personnel.”

The two-year-old procedure “appears to meet or exceed the safeguards” taken by other counties, the report says.

It also finds no fault with the forensic pathology services provided under contract by the Richards-Fischer-Fukumoto Medical Group Inc., whose members perform autopsies that are ordered by the coroner.

“Although the pathology firm has been the subject of controversy in the past, those we interviewed believe the services are adequate,” the review says. “The pathologists are generally regarded as competent and dedicated.”

The supervisors ordered the forensic pathology contract put out for competitive bidding two years ago, after disclosures that Richards-Fischer-Fukumoto had performed the job for a decade in which the county never sought other bids.

As it turned out, the medical group was the only bidder two years ago, winning a five-year contract estimated to cost the county a total of $3.1 million. Costs per autopsy were $220 the first year, rising to $280 in the fifth year of the contract.

One of the group’s founders, Dr. Walter R. Fischer, committed suicide in July of 1985, three months after telling the district attorney’s office that he had misplaced tissue slides that should have been introduced as evidence in a murder case.

The county administrative office’s report says the county should consider hiring a staff forensic pathologist to cut costs, but notes the difficulty of finding someone qualified for the job.

The report also says there is no need to hold routine inquests, which are procedures in which subpoenas can be used to compel public testimony during the investigation of a death.

It says the only large counties routinely using inquests are San Francisco, which held 30 last year, and Los Angeles, which held one. Both counties combine their coroner’s office with a medical examiner’s department.

The report says the coroner’s current practice of “comprehensive investigation” is used in most large counties and “has proven to be a more efficient and cost-effective method to determine the mode and manner of death.”

Gates said that in deaths involving law enforcement officers, or in an “unusual death in which we want to thoroughly review the death because it affects families, or insurance companies, or whatever,” he forms a coroner’s review committee to study all reports of pathologists, toxicologists and other experts “to make sure we have done our job properly.”

He said such a committee will review the cases of two inmates who died in the County Jail in separate incidents in January and the death in a car crash the same month of Duayne D. Christensen. Christensen died hours before state regulators seized his Santa Ana bank, North America Savings & Loan Assn.

Gates said his special adviser on the review committee, Marshal Houts, inadvertently suggested names of just about everyone on another group, the coroner’s liaison committee, to review the three January deaths.

Because the liaison committee’s meetings are public, Gates said he suggested that Houts find others to form the review committee, whose meetings are private because they involve study of confidential medical and psychiatric reports.