Autopsy Delays Plague Coroner’s Office : Medicine: While examiners face burdensome workloads and staff shortages, forensic experts warn that time lags can alter post-mortem results. They also add to the grief of families.

Death came swiftly to Rodney Davis one night last June when he was gunned down in front of his girlfriend’s house in Compton. But what happened after that was anything but hurried.

Davis’ body lay in a hospital morgue for days before it was picked up by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, and an autopsy was not performed until nearly a week after he was murdered.

The wait was longer than most, but by no means unique in a department that has in recent years been plagued by autopsy delays unheard of in other major medical examiner offices around the country. Coroner’s records show that during especially busy periods this year, three to five days often elapsed before an autopsy was conducted. In some cases, a week or more has gone by without the autopsy being performed.

The delays may seem of little import to a caseload that is by its nature not going anywhere. But the long, uncertain waits for release of a body add to the grief of families who are already reeling from deaths that are frequently unexpected and violent.

In addition, forensic experts warn that such lags can subtly alter autopsy results, thereby affecting police investigations. And while police seem to accept the delays as just another slowdown in Los Angeles County’s overburdened criminal justice system, detectives can wait for days for crucial information in homicide cases.

For instance, in the case of a Reseda infant who died June 16 after a reported fall while in the care of a sitter, it took five days for the coroner’s office to conduct an autopsy and conclude that the child’s death was not accidental, but the result of being “battered by another.” The sitter was subsequently arrested on murder charges.

Coroner’s officials say they are working to eliminate the delays, which they blame on a daunting caseload and chronic staff shortages.

After the New York City coroner’s office, the Los Angeles County Department of Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner is the second busiest in the nation. About one in four deaths in the county are referred to the office, which by law must investigate homicides, suicides, accidents and natural deaths in which the person was not seen by a physician within 20 days of death.

In 1989, the department investigated 18,000 deaths and conducted 5,804 autopsies. Every year there are more cases, an endless grim procession that keeps the office working seven days a week and lines halls with partially clad corpses waiting for a space in the crowded autopsy rooms. Some days, nearly 100 new cases flood the office.

And with only about 15 physicians performing autopsies that can take up to three or four hours each to complete, the pathology staff is about half that recommended by the National Assn. of Medical Examiners.

Throughout the country, major medical examiner offices are struggling with the twin burdens of escalating homicide rates and a national shortage of forensic pathologists. Yet nowhere do the waits stretch to five or six days, as they have in Los Angeles.

“That’s a rotten way to treat people,” observed Dr. Charles Hirsch, New York City’s chief medical examiner. “And I bet there’s a lot of hypocrisy. If you had a county supervisor whose son was killed in a car accident, I bet it wouldn’t take five days for them to release the body.”

Hirsch said that his office investigated 40,000 deaths and conducted 8,000 autopsies last year, but that typically no more than a day passes between the time his office is notified of a death and the autopsy is performed. Similarly, medical examiners in other major cities said most of their autopsies were conducted within 24 hours--or, at most, 36 hours--of a person’s death.

A Los Angeles County audit report on the coroner’s office released last April did not discuss the autopsy delays, but it warned that the department was in danger of being overwhelmed by its workload. In addition, it cited staff shortages, improper body storage and low staff morale as problems and made more than 100 suggestions for improvements.

Since then, Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Dr. Richard Kornblum has resigned and the County Board of Supervisors has split his job in two.

Candidates are now being interviewed to fill two new positions: a manager, who will supervise administrative tasks, and chief medical examiner, who will oversee autopsies and related activities.

County supervisors increased the coroner’s budget by $1.6 million last summer, to $12.6 million, in order to hire four additional investigators and five pathologists. In the meantime, the Sheriff’s Department and the district attorney’s office have lent investigators to temporarily augment the coroner’s staff. As a result, a coroner’s spokesman said, cases have been processed more quickly and autopsy delays have been shortened during the last few months.

“We’re trying . . . for a 48-hour turnaround on most cases,” said spokesman Bob Dambacher.

They’re not always succeeding, however. One day last month, nearly a third of the cases awaiting autopsies were at least three days old.

For mourning families who don’t know when they’re going to have a body to bury, the wait can be cruel and frustrating.

“You’ve lost someone near and dear,” remarked Joseph Bukowski Jr. of Westminster, who had to wait six days before the body of his 81-year-old father was autopsied last summer. “We thought, three or four days, it should have been over.

“We never even got (an obituary) in the paper,” continued Bukowski, whose father, a Bell Gardens resident, was fatally injured in a traffic accident. “The turnout (for the funeral) was way below what it should have been. We had no date. What could we say?”

Funeral directors say they have learned the hard way not to schedule a viewing or funeral service until remains have been released. More than a year ago, Sunland funeral home owner Richard Callahan arranged a viewing only to have “400 people file past an empty casket” because the body was not ready when he was told it would be.

And, when morticians do pick up a body, it has not always been in good shape.

“We are even receiving bodies with maggots,” Los Angeles funeral director Ron Hast complained.

The delays have prompted numerous complaints by the Los Angeles County Funeral Directors Assn. to county supervisors. Association members also point out that when celebrities die, there usually are no long waits.

“The coroner’s office has a special procedure for celebrities,” contended association president Callahan. “They get those bodies out in 24 hours.”

The office denies any favoritism, but concedes that when the press is pounding on its doors about a case, it will get attention.

Aside from inconveniencing families, the autopsy delays can also lead to slight differences in what the pathologist finds.

“Refrigeration doesn’t preserve,” said Dr. Joseph H. Davis, chief medical examiner of Dade County, Fla., which includes Miami. “There’s some bacteria growth. Chemicals are diffusing through the tissue. That interferes with toxicology results. When you want to do microscopic studies, the tissues are muddy. Detail is not there. You can’t let these things sit.”

Furthermore, in homicides and cases where the cause of death is not obvious, it is important to police investigations to perform autopsies swiftly, medical examiners say. What police may initially think are knife wounds can turn out to be bullet wounds. Similarly, ballistic and other evidence can be recovered from the body, casting light on how, when and where a person died.

Swamped with their own caseloads and accustomed to the delays, Los Angeles-area police just shrug their shoulders.

“I can’t fault the coroner’s office for a six-day delay,” said Los Angeles Detective Richard Marks, who waited nearly a week last summer before an autopsy was conducted and a bullet removed from the body of David Moch, a Los Angeles teen-ager killed in an apparent gang shooting.

Several months after the shooting, Marks said, he was still waiting for his forensic lab to pick up the bullet for examination.

Because evidence of sexual assault disappears within hours, the coroner’s office collects it from suspected rape victims before the autopsy. But blood and tissue samples for drug and other tests are not taken until the autopsy or post-mortem examination by the pathologist.

Joseph Muto, chief of forensic laboratories in the coroner’s office, acknowledged that there can be significant decreases in cocaine levels by the time blood samples are taken, since cocaine breaks down quickly. He maintained that the delays do not present a problem, however, since his office takes them into account and measures the cocaine byproduct to estimate levels of the drug at death.

In the cases they reviewed, county auditors found no instances in which a cause of death had been inaccurately determined. They cautioned, however, that the shortage of pathologists could only heighten the risk of error.

Even with this year’s budget increases, the coroner’s office may find it difficult to expand its pathology staff. Of 18 deputy medical examiner positions now budgeted, only seven are filled with permanent staff pathologists. “We definitely have a retention-recruitment problem,” acknowledged Tony Hernandez, head of coroner’s staff services.

Some openings are temporarily filled with short-term help or contract pathologists, so combined with supervisors and residents in training, there are about 15 physicians performing autopsies, Hernandez said.

Relatively low pay, along with a reputation for a brutal workload, have been major obstacles to luring pathologists to Los Angeles.

For that reason, the county is considering salary increases to make the department more competitive with offices such as New York’s, where the entry level pay for a board-certified forensic pathologist is about $10,000 a year more than the $80,000 offered in Los Angeles.