Suicide suspected in death of O.C. law professor

A Chapman University law professor who died after falling from a building may have committed suicide, authorities said Monday.

Orange County Supervising Deputy Coroner Daniel Aikin said preliminary findings indicated that Mary Katherine Baird Darmer, 47, took her own life Friday. But an autopsy is still pending and “our investigations are not complete yet,” Aikin said. An official cause of death has not been determined, authorities said.

According to details released by the coroner’s office, Darmer fell from a parking garage in the 19700 block of MacArthur Boulevard in Irvine at 11:30 a.m. Friday.

A profile on the Chapman University School of Law website notes that Darmer specialized in criminal procedure. Before joining the faculty full time at Chapman in 2000, she served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, where she prosecuted public corruption, violent gangs and narcotics cases. During her tenure in that post, she also argued seven cases in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, the website says.

Darmer received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University with high honors and her law degree from Columbia University, according to Chapman University’s website. She clerked for U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood in the Southern District of New York and Judge William H. Timbers on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. After her clerkships and before joining the U.S. attorney’s office, she worked for three years as a litigation associate at the Manhattan law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, the website says.

She was hailed as a champion of gay rights and equality and was a founding member of the Orange County Equality Coalition, an organization started in the wake of Proposition 8. She frequently provided media commentary on issues such as marriage equality and the war on terror.

ann.simmons@latimes.com