For the second time in two years, a Denver medical examiner’s use of the term “homicide” to describe the death of a man being subdued by police or sheriff’s deputies has provoked consternation and dismay in some quarters that no charges will be filed.
That reaction was probably inevitable in the case of Marvin Booker, who died at the Denver jail in July 2010, given initial inflammatory reports about how he had been treated.
However, the latest case, in our view, has always been less ambiguous. To blame the tragic July 18 death of Alonzo Ashley at the Denver Zoo on those who grappled with him — which included not only Denver police but also a zoo security guard and a private citizen — seems entirely unfair. And as Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey concluded, “The facts of this case do not support a finding of any criminal conduct by the involved citizens and law enforcement officers.”
Like Morrissey, we’re also surprised that the medical examiner felt compelled to use the term “homicide” in the Ashley case.
After all, Dr. John Carver’s report lists several factors that could have contributed to the 29-year-old’s death, including extreme heat (“heat stress, exhaustion and stroke can occur quickly,” Carver writes), “possible hypertension,” and Ashley’s “own ongoing resistance” to being physically restrained. And yet Carver concludes that the “manner of death is best characterized as homicide” because “the physiologic stresses involved in subduing and restraining” Ashley “were contributory to his death.”
Remember, it was Ashley who reportedly initiated the violence by attacking a zoo security guard and then resisting Denver police who arrived on the scene. During the struggle, he bit two people, sent three to the hospital, and at one point seized control of a Taser.
Even if the use of “homicide” implies no legal culpability, as Carver is at pains to emphasize, it certainly sounds as if the medical examiner is suggesting the bulk of the “physiologic stresses” were inflicted upon Ashley rather than a result of his own exertions.
And yet who can really know?
A medical examiner does have the option of calling the manner of death “undetermined,” and Morrissey tells us that in his experience, that is the term medical examiners have usually preferred in similar cases in the past.
“I’ve never seen this before,” Morrissey said. (We tried to reach Carver, but were told he is on vacation.)
The district attorney says the use of “homicide” in Ashley’s death is especially worrisome because “there were citizens involved in this. There were zoo personnel involved. … I think it sends the wrong message,” he added, to people inclined to come to the aid of others.
At the very least it can sow unnecessary confusion, which in our view is bad enough.
