Delays in LAPD Calls Hamper Coroner

Despite a state law requiring immediate notification, Los Angeles homicide detectives frequently wait hours to contact the coroner’s office to examine bodies--delays that could jeopardize investigations, Los Angeles County coroner’s officials say.

Coroner investigators say they should be contacted within one hour, but delays of two to four hours are common. In some cases, police have waited more than 12 hours before calling, allowing bodies to reach stages of decay that complicate efforts to determine how and when a person died, coroners say.

Los Angeles Police Department officials say long delays are rare but sometimes necessary to give officers time to take control of a crime scene and get a firm idea of what happened.

Cmdr. David Kalish said homicide investigators usually call the coroner’s office as soon as possible, but that “things can slip through the cracks. . . . It’s a topic that’s been brought up within the department and is being looked at, but it doesn’t appear to be a systemic problem.”

In a notable exception, some suspect that a 10-hour delay weakened the prosecution’s case against O.J. Simpson, who could afford top-flight lawyers and expert witnesses to focus on the issue. Otherwise, coroner notification delays have not had a significant impact on criminal prosecutions, according to Los Angeles County district attorney’s office sources. But coroner’s officials fear that capable defense attorneys will eventually take advantage of the flaws inherent in delayed death investigations.

“The most common question asked at the crime scene is: ‘When did he die?’ ” said Dr. Michael Baden, director of forensic pathology for the New York State Police.

Baden, who testified in the Simpson criminal trial and a number of other high-profile cases, said long delays--which interfere with tests of body temperature, skin discoloration, chemical changes in the eyes and other factors--make it difficult to determine a time of death. And the time of death is often the key evidence needed to place suspects at crime scenes.

“The evidence degrades--especially if you have a victim of a sexual assault. Sperm, semen, saliva must be collected as soon as possible,” said coroner’s Chief Investigator Craig Harvey. Forensic evidence deteriorates even more quickly when bodies are exposed to the elements or are in unusual positions.

Harvey recalled a murder victim who was left upside down in a trash can for several hours by police. Blood that collected in the head and neck nearly obscured strangulation marks around the woman’s neck, he said.

The delays were discussed during at least one high-level meeting between the coroner’s office and the LAPD at Parker Center this year. Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and Deputy Chief Martin Pomeroy were there, as were Harvey, coroner’s administrative director Anthony Hernandez and Chief Medical Examiner Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran.

During the meeting Parks gave assurances that the problem would be addressed by his administration, but coroner’s officials say they have seen little improvement.

“The officers who do homicide investigations have a great responsibility thrust upon them--we don’t want to interfere with that,” Harvey said. “All we’re asking is that we be notified earlier on. Some of the evidence we need to conduct our investigations is not collected by the police and is time sensitive.”

Officials have been keeping track of late notifications since 1995.

Last month, a Florida man visiting relatives in Laurel Canyon was shot to death during a home invasion robbery just after midnight. Police were contacted shortly thereafter.

Five hours later, when a reporter called to inquire about the slaying, coroner’s officials had not even heard about the case.

“We contacted the handling agency and got the first report,” said one coroner’s official. “Police called us around noon for a response,” nearly 12 hours after the slaying.

Said another coroner’s source: “You’d think we would have learned from the O.J. case.”

The LAPD’s decision to keep coroner’s staff away from the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Lyle Goldman for 10 hours was seized upon by Simpson’s attorneys in their successful criminal defense of the former football star in 1995. The long delay frustrated attempts to determine the time of death and substantially weakened the prosecution’s case, according to courtroom observers.

In response to the Simpson case and others, coroner’s officials started offering information sessions to help LAPD officers comply with state laws regarding death notification. The law requires “immediate” notification, without defining the term--coroner’s officials say it should mean no more than an hour.

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Thus far, coroner’s officials said, only the Rampart and West Los Angeles stations have requested the workshops--but not since 1996. Still, Harvey said he noticed that calls were placed much quicker by officers from those stations and he hopes others follow suit.

In June, coroner’s spokesman Scott Carrier criticized police for failing to notify the coroner’s office of the May 28 murder-suicide of comic actor Phil Hartman and his wife, Brynn, for six hours after the initial 911 call. Had a Los Angeles City News Service reporter not called the coroner’s office, it might have taken longer.

Coroner’s investigators said that when they called the LAPD’s West Valley detectives, they were rebuffed. “They told us: ‘We’re not ready for you yet,’ ” Harvey said.

“That’s not true,” said Lt. George Rock of the West Valley station. “I don’t know the exact time we first notified them, but I think it was within the first hour or so.”

Kalish said the delays are not as long as the coroner’s office records indicate because investigators usually call coroner’s officials “just to give them a heads up” and that those preliminary calls are not always recorded in the coroner’s files.

Coroner’s officials disagree, saying that the first calls are always noted on paper and on audiotape.

Even without being held up by police, coroner’s officials say time is their scarcest resource. Only 23 coroner’s investigators cover about 20,000 deaths every year in one of the nation’s largest counties. Whenever a death is called in, they can count on driving for at least 30 minutes each way to the scene of a crime--and if the case is in the Antelope Valley, the drive can take two hours because the coroner’s Sylmar substation is often not staffed.

In addition to potential problems in the courtroom, coroner’s officials say they are concerned about the way in which late notification affects grieving survivors. Extremely long delays can deepen the pain of families whose loved ones have died.

“Decomposition hinders the ability of the family to have an open casket ceremony if they desire and often renders the body non-viewable,” Harvey said. “That’s something the family has to deal with sometimes.

“The impression given is that dead people don’t matter--that is incorrect at best and at worst, arrogant. . . . The coroner is the person who speaks for the dead.”

In 1996, Deborah Belcher identified the body of her husband, an armored car guard, two hours after he was shot during a botched robbery. “He just looked like he was sleeping,” she said.

That tiny consolation was torn away when she visited the body at the mortuary a few days later.

“His face was all distorted. It didn’t even look like him anymore--it was a real shock to all of us,” Belcher said. “To see him looking like that really angered me.”

Records show that LAPD homicide detectives waited 17 hours before notifying the coroner’s office about the death of her husband. Meanwhile, his body lay in a morgue at Daniel Freeman Hospital in Marina del Rey. Coroner’s sources said Belcher’s heartbreak could have been avoided had the body been refrigerated properly--something coroner’s officials could have done had they been contacted earlier.

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“The funeral home did their best to fix him up,” Belcher said. “That involved my brother and my brother-in-law going in and telling them how he looked before.”

Belcher says she did not allow her 3-year-old twin daughters to attend the funeral because she “thought it would be too devastating.”

“He didn’t even look like their father anymore.”

The delayed notifications are caused by poor police training, coroner’s officials say, rather than any malice or interagency distrust.

“It’s a big department and a lot of folks have been doing things a certain way for years,” Harvey said. “We’re just talking about a ‘meet-you-in-the-middle kind of thing’ so we can get both our jobs done.”