“Homicide occurs when death results from a volitional act committed by another person to cause fear, harm or death.” — The National Association of Medical Examiners, from “A Guide for Manner of Death Classification.”
Did the police who subdued Alonzo Ashley after he assaulted a Denver zoo employee on July 18 mean “to cause fear, harm or death”? Almost certainly not, if reports recounting the incident are true.
Then why did a Denver medical examiner label Ashley’s death a homicide?
Dr. John Carver explains in his report that he did so because “physiologic stresses” involved in subduing Ashley “were contributory to his death.” And Carver insists this was a “medical judgment” not meant to suggest “legal culpability.”
But as Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey argues, Carver’s own report never claims to identify the decisive reason this 29-year-old suffered cardiorespiratory arrest. The examiner also mentions the possibility of “heat stress” as well as Ashley’s “ongoing resistance,” which sent people to the hospital. Indeed, his “agitation, combativeness and unexpected strength” were so pronounced they were “consistent with descriptions of ‘excited delirium.’ “
Classifying “manner of death” as homicide shifts the focus to those who grappled with Ashley — not all of whom were police. Wouldn’t “undetermined” or even “accident” have been better choices?
Morrissey was apparently so dumbfounded by the ruling that he checked to see if it was consistent with the National Association of Medical Examiners’ standards, and what he discovered upset him more.
Sure enough, the guide says a death related to measures taken by police to subdue a person “may be classified as Homicide.” But the guide goes on to say, remarkably, that “there is some value to the homicide classification toward reducing the public perception that a ‘cover up’ is being perpetrated by the death investigation agency.”
“You call them as you see them,” Morrissey told me. “That’s a PR standard,” not a medical standard.
If it’s a PR standard for some, it’s a PR nightmare for prosecutors if they have no basis for filing charges against police, since “homicide” is such a loaded word.
If you read the entire guide, you may be struck by how differently it treats deaths associated with police actions from deaths in other settings.
You’d think, for example, that “when a person commits suicide by forcing the police to shoot,” the death would be classified as, well, a suicide. But the guide says it “may be classified as a Homicide” — while noting again how “perceptions of a ‘cover up’ may be minimized” by doing so.
Ah, but what about perceptions of a cover up in deaths from “grossly negligent medical care”? Surely they too should warrant the label of homicide. But no. Such deaths “may be classified as Accident unless there is clear indication of intent to do harm.”
Why a different standard for docs as opposed to police? Because docs wrote the guide? Revealingly, the authors say that applying the term homicide in such cases is “better left to others” because the “criminalization of medical malpractice” is of “great concern.”
Time and again, the guide prefers “accident” over “homicide” — regarding deaths by negligent drivers and negligent parents, for example — when you’d think it would be otherwise given the standard set for cops.
Morrissey says the use of “homicide” in a death such as the one at the zoo is rare in his experience, so it may be the guide is flouted more than followed by coroners in the field. Yet you can hardly blame the DA for fuming about a double standard that at least some experts seem eager to apply.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
