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Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"" |
| Date: |
23 May 2005 09:57:56 PM |
| Object: |
OT: The Schiavo case goes two for two |
Propriety, accuracy and thoroughness first in Judge Greer, and now
the same from the coroner. In a state rampant with political
fraud and corruption, it's great news.
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/05/09/Tampabay/Schiavo_findings_won_.shtml
Bob Dog
Atheist #153 = 1^3 + 5^3 + 3^3
EAC's chief cook and brainwasher
-----
"You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among
sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an
exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which
unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the
United States."
- Richard Dawkins
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Schiavo findings won't be rushed
Despite conflicting calls for thoroughness and quick results, Jon
Thogmartin won't let appeals from the public force his hand.
By LEONORA LaPETER, Times Staff Writer
Published May 9, 2005
LARGO - People around the world have talked about the life and
death of Terri Schiavo, but Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon
hogmartin will get the last word.
For the past month, he has been working on her autopsy. She has
taken over his office and consumed his working hours. He appeared
for an interview in blue scrubs, looking every bit the wiry
medical examiner with his bald head and tiny wire-rimmed glasses.
"That's her and that's her," he says, pointing to piles of
documents and boxes of slides stacked all over his office.
And so you must stand in the doorway of his office to look at the
old skulls and microscopes and fading picture of his dapper
grandfather in knickers and the lifesize pencil drawing of Spock
and Capt. Kirk.
Thogmartin, 41, knows Schiavo's autopsy will probably be the most
publicized of his career. He won't talk about it until he is done
and estimates it will be two or three more weeks.
He has received hundreds of letters and e-mails about the
brain-damaged woman who died March 31, 13 days after her feeding
tube was removed. Many ask him to look for signs she wasn't
brain-dead or signs of abuse, among the allegations made during
the protracted battle between her parents and her husband over
whether to keep her alive.
"They are of no consequence to me," says Thogmartin of the
letters.
The lively Texan, publicity shy and fiercely protective of his
wife's and child's privacy, is known for doing everything by the
book. He denied requests from Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary
Schindler, and her husband, Michael Schiavo, to allow their own
pathologists to observe the autopsy.
"It is routine in cases of criminal importance to not allow any
biased pathology advocates in the morgue," he said. "I'm the
independent pathologist."
* * *
Thogmartin says you don't choose your career. It chooses you.
In his case, it began when he was 4 years old in Dallas - and
fired his first handgun.
"I always liked firearms and when you're born in Texas, they say
you're born with a diaper and a sidearm," says Thogmartin, now a
gunshot wound expert.
He ran 80 miles a week in cross-country track and field from the
time he was 15. He ran his way to a partial scholarship at
Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
But, he notes wryly, when you run that much, you run yourself
down. His legs and hips gave out before he had completed a year of
college.
Though he fainted at the sight of blood as a kid, he decided to
become a forensic pathologist because it offered surgery without
the trauma of life and death. And good malpractice insurance
rates.
He learned jujitsu, a martial art, so that he could learn about
choke holds and become an expert on asphyxiation.
In 1996, when Thogmartin had been at the Miami-Dade Medical
Examiner's Office for less than a year, a Valujet airliner crashed
into the Everglades. He found himself hanging off an airboat in a
swamp, collecting body parts from divers. He and his colleagues
identified 70 of the 105 victims.
"He's the kind of individual to do the job right, and he was able
to handle many of the remains with speed and efficiency," said
Roger Mittleman, Miami-Dade's former chief medical examiner.
Thogmartin took an associate medical examiner's job in Broward
County and then a similar job in Palm Beach County. He racked up
some well-publicized cases. He figured out that a man who police
thought had been hit by a car had actually dropped 30,000 feet
from the wheel well of a plane. He identified the remains of five
teenagers missing for two decades in a van that had sunk in a
ditch.
In 1997, he became Palm Beach County's medical examiner and told a
reporter he would stay there until he was "old and gray." But
within a year he left and became an independent medical examiner
so he could gain more control. In Palm Beach, he was a county
employee. As medical examiner of Pinellas and Pasco counties,
Thogmartin answers to Gov. Jeb Bush.
He's also the only medical examiner in the state to run his own
crime lab.
* * *
In November 2000, Thogmartin, showed up at the Pinellas-Pasco
Medical Examiner's Office. He was an odd-looking figure. He had no
hair, no eyelashes and no eyebrows. He'd learned after accepting
the job that he had testicular cancer. It had been misdiagnosed
and spread to his liver, lungs and pancreas. He had begun
chemotherapy and asked Pinellas County for a one-month delay in
his start time.
He stood there that day for about five to 10 minutes, watching
four or five employees at the front desk ignore him.
He decided right then he would keep only one of them, a woman who
was working hard transcribing at her desk.
Today, Thogmartin, whose cancer is in remission, runs the
40-person office like a business and is paid $170,000 a year. He
has reversed two findings of his predecessor, Joan Wood, resulting
in two fathers who were accused of shaking their babies to death
being cleared of murder charges.
He suggested Pasco County might want to pay more than the $25 an
autopsy it had been paying since the 1970s. Now they pay $800. He
moved his staff into a new $13-million building in Largo.
He recently made a pitch to Pinellas County commissioners to start
DNA testing at his lab. Commissioners were receptive.
State Attorney Bernie McCabe and Public Defender Bob Dillinger
used the same words to describe Thogmartin: "professional" and
"independent."
"There were numerous problems when Dr. Wood was here," Dillinger
said, "in terms of (her) not being a neutral independent expert
and instead viewing herself as an arm of law enforcement."
Thogmartin requires his staff to go out to any death that does not
occur in a hospital or nursing home. As a result, medical examiner
investigators went to 890 scenes last year, up from 42 in 2000,
the year before Thogmartin took over.
While Thogmartin adopts a laid-back attitude toward his 40
employees, he's quick to fire those who don't meet his
expectations. By his own account, he has gotten rid of about a
dozen employees, not including those he eliminated when he walked
in the door.
Still, he appears to have an easy rapport with his colleagues and
a knack for making people laugh.
Once, in Miami-Dade, Thogmartin and three colleagues went to a
Subway for lunch. When one of them, Charles Siebert, got up to get
something from the counter, Thogmartin hammered Siebert's bag of
potato chips with his fist. Then he resumed eating.
Thogmartin's companions tried not to laugh as Siebert pinched
crumbs out of the bag and complained that potato chips didn't come
like they used to.
"He has a weird sense of humor," said Siebert, Panama City's chief
medical examiner, "and I guess you need that in this job."
* * *
Now at the center of the Schiavo hurricane, Thogmartin says he
feels the pressure but is not influenced by it.
"I get e-mails that say, "Please be thorough, please be thorough,
please be thorough,"' he said. "Then in the next paragraph, they
say, "Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, why aren't you done yet?"'
He admits he is probably treating Schiavo differently than he
would other autopsies.
"This is a case that as far as the pathology goes is fairly
routine," he said. "But there is all this ancillary stuff and the
problem is the time delay. You have a 15-year delay between the
incident (when Schiavo collapsed and her brain was deprived of
oxygen) and the time of death."
Some have questioned whether Thogmartin has jurisdiction over
Schiavo. He says he does because she was cremated and he must
approve all cremations, and also because there are allegations of
unusual circumstances.
"Somebody could say this isn't a medical examiner's case and
medically speaking it's not," said Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, the
Allegheny County, Pa., coroner whom the Schindlers initially asked
to review Thogmartin's work. "However, with all the allegations, I
must say I would agree and have no problem understanding
jurisdiction."
E-mails and letters have streamed in accusing Thogmartin of bias.
A Star Trek fan, when the tough questions come up, Thogmartin
often jokes with his staff, "What would Capt. Kirk do?"
But his philosophy, one he heard from a Miami-Dade medical
examiner, is serious: "There's no right or wrong way to sign a
death certificate. There's the high road and the low road, the
good way and the bad way."
Says Thogmartin: "Basically it means that as long as you're being
honest, you can't be wrong. You have to call it as you see it and
let the fallout come."
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: OT: The Schiavo case goes two for two |
25 May 2005 05:50:15 PM |
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On 23 May 2005 19:57:56 -0700, wrote:
Propriety, accuracy and thoroughness first in Judge Greer, and now
the same from the coroner. In a state rampant with political
fraud and corruption, it's great news.
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/05/09/Tampabay/Schiavo_findings_won_.shtml
Yes it is. Its too bad such doesn't exist from the governor on down.
Schiavo findings won't be rushed
Despite conflicting calls for thoroughness and quick results, Jon
Thogmartin won't let appeals from the public force his hand.
By LEONORA LaPETER, Times Staff Writer
Published May 9, 2005
[]
--
Contempt of Congress meter reading-offscale.
Hello, theocracy with a fundamentalist US Supreme
Court who will ensure church and state are joined
at the hip like clergy and altar boys.
America 1776-Jan 2001 RIP
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president
represents, more and more closely, the inner soul
of the people. On some great and glorious day the
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last and the White House will be adorned
by a downright moron." --- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)
Religion is the original war crime.
-Michelle Malkin (Feb 26, 2005)
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