After the sudden death of the Supreme Court justice Saturday, no autopsy was performed and no medical official was called to the scene. One law enforcement expert called the authorities’ handling of the death “sloppy.”
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia speaks at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut on March 8, 2012.
Jessica Hill / AP
Three days after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead at a Texas ranch, questions surrounding the conservative icon's sudden death remain unanswered.
The 79-year-old was discovered lifeless in his hotel room Saturday at Cibolo Creek Ranch. The owner of the ranch, Texas businessman John Poindexter, told the Los Angeles Times he had invited Scalia to the remote site near the Mexican border for a private party. Scalia declined a security detail for the trip, The Washington Post reported.
On Saturday morning, the justice missed a morning outing at the ranch, prompting Poindexter to knock on the door of Scalia's room. No one answered, so eventually Poindexter opened the door to the room and found Scalia lying lifeless in bed in his pajamas.
"I went over and felt his hand and it was very cold, no pulse," Poindexter told the Times. "You could see he was not alive."
The shifting details of what exactly Poindexter observed in Scalia's hotel room are just one of several questions raised in the death of the justice. Earlier this week, Poindexter told the San Antonio Express-News that he found Scalia dead with a pillow over his head.
"We discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. His bed clothes were unwrinkled," said Poindexter.
However, in later interviews he said the pillow was actually above Scalia's head, not on his face.
Poindexter did not respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment.
The entrance to the Cibolo Creek Ranch early Sunday, the day after the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Matthew Busch / Getty Images
What happened next further muddied the picture: The U.S. Marshals arrived on the scene, then in a phone call told Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara "there were no signs of foul play."
Guevara ultimately pronounced Scalia dead of natural causes — without ever visiting the scene. She initially indicated the cause of death was a heart attack, but later walked back those comments and said merely that his heart had stopped.
No coroner or medical examiner visited, nor was an autopsy performed. No further information about Scalia's cause of death has been given.
Scalia's body was later embalmed.
Guevara also did not immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment.
But Bill Ritchie — the former head of criminal investigations for the Washington, D.C., police — told BuzzFeed News the entire process was "sloppy" and said it opened the door to questions about what happened, and if there was any foul play.
"I'm not suggesting that it was anything other than a natural death," Ritchie said, "but what I'm saying is the sloppiness leaves it open."
The former police investigator's concerns about Scalia's death gained attention Monday when he wrote in a Facebook post that there was "something fishy going on in Texas." In such a high profile case, officials in Texas should have been especially thorough, Ritchie said, making sure every potential question was answered.
Authorities should have checked for potential hemorrhaging around Scalia's eyes and lips, which would indicate possible suffocation, he said. Additionally, U.S. Marshals aren't typically given "death investigative training" that would enable them to thoroughly investigate a death scene, Ritchie said.
"In every death that you investigate you assume that that death is a homicide until your investigation proves otherwise," he added.
Though Ritchie acknowledged that what happened was allowable under Texas law, he said officials still should have been more exhaustive in their handling of the death.
Mike Arntfield, a former police officer, criminologist, and professor at Vanderbilt University called Texas' system "bizarre."
"I haven't heard of a system where a decision is made by someone with no medical training," Arntfield told BuzzFeed News, referring to Guevara's death declaration.
For Arntfield, Scalia's death didn't automatically raise a red flag. He said that the justice's age and reported history of health problems may have prompted the decision to not perform an autopsy — something Arntfield said could potentially have been the family's financial responsibility if it wasn't ordered by a doctor. If Scalia had just been an ordinary citizen, his death wouldn't have raised any eyebrows, Arntfield said.
Still, the former criminologist said there have been cases that didn't look suspicious but nevertheless ended up involving foul play. And, like Ritchie, he pointed to the high profile nature of the case and said that he was bewildered by what happened.
"I'm surprised given the sort of gravitas of the situation, that those boxes weren't ticked," he added.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1KoZJkR
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