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Medical examiners and cover-ups
In 2012, Darren Rainey died a gruesome death at the hands of Florida state corrections officers. Rainey, who was incarcerated at Dade Correctional Institution and had schizophrenia, was forced into a scalding hot shower after he defecated in his cell. In the years after Rainey’s death, after another incarcerated person inside fought to tell the story and the Miami Herald battled to unearth it, it became known that guards at Dade Correctional used dangerously hot showers, with the temperature controls outside the locked door, as a form of control against people with mental illness. That day, a guard locked Rainey in a blistering hot shower and walked away. When the guard returned two hours later, Rainey was unconscious on the floor. In 2014, another man incarcerated at the prison told the Miami Herald that he heard Rainey’s screams and several guards’ taunts, and that when he was ordered to clean up the shower cell he discovered strips of Rainey’s skin on the floor. [Julie K. Brown / Miami Herald]
Three years after Rainey’s death, the medical examiner, Dr. Emma Lew, concluded that Rainey’s death was an “accident” and he had died from “complications from schizophrenia, heart disease and confinement to a shower.’’ Lew also said she saw no burns and no evidence of trauma on Rainey’s body—conclusions that were in direct contradiction to the photographs of Rainey’s body, the recorded observations of others who saw Rainey’s body the night he died, and the opinions of other experts. The state’s attorney, when explaining her decision not to bring charges in the case, later said the autopsy formed the foundation of her decision. Her office’s report summarizing the investigation cited the absence of burns as making it impossible to prove that a crime had been committed, as it meant the shower was not dangerously hot. The state’s attorney also, according to the Herald, “emphasized that ‘science’ showed that Rainey did not die from the actions of the corrections officers.” [Julie K. Brown / Miami Herald]
When the Miami Herald reviewed the state’s attorney report it “identified numerous contradictions and omissions regarding both the autopsy findings and other evidence and statements used as the basis to clear the corrections officers.” One expert the paper consulted pointed to Lew’s failure to examine more than one skin tissue sample. “You have to assume from the start that these are burns until proven otherwise, not the other way around,” he said, pointing to the first responders’ description of burns on Rainey’s body. [Julie K. Brown / Miami Herald]
Last week, the Miami New Times reported that a review of Lew’s personnel file shows that in the years since Rainey’s death and her findings exonerating the prison staff, Lew received a promotion, an award for which the state’s attorney recommended her, and a raise. Four months after she completed Darren Rainey’s autopsy report, she was appointed interim director of the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner Department. Lew’s willingness to overlook the signs of Rainey’s killing certainly didn’t hinder, and may have helped, her continued professional advancement. [Meg O’Connor / Miami New Times]
Two years ago, the 45th anniversary of the Attica uprising was an occasion to remember a very different set of actions by a medical examiner. In 1971, after the violent retaking of Attica by state troopers that resulted in 40 people dead, 10 of them hostages, Dr. John Edland, the chief medical examiner of Monroe County, New York, performed the autopsies. Rumors spread by local officials and law enforcement alleged that incarcerated people had murdered the dead. But what Edland discovered was that they died from gunshot wounds, which could only have been inflicted by the state troopers since those involved in the uprising had no guns. Edland’s findings made it impossible to ignore that the deaths had come at the hands of the state troopers. [Radley Balko / Washington Post]
Edland, a registered Republican who had voted for Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, knew that his findings might be buried. He called a news conference and contacted local Black clergy to attend with him. As he anticipated, many refused to accept Edland’s autopsy results. He was vilified across the state and became the target of a harassment campaign that included threats of violence against him and his family. [Gary Craig / Democrat and Chronicle]
Edland’s role in unmasking the events at Attica showed how a cover-up would have required the complicity of everyone involved. By refusing to be complicit, he exposed the truth about what happened. But it is still rare to see medical examiners expose violence committed by corrections officers. As Radley Balko of the Washington Post wrote, “In recent years, we’ve seen example after example of forensic experts too willing to compromise their ethics in the face of pressure from police and prosecutors.”
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