AUTOPSIES: A COSTLY NECESSITY OR WASTE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS

On June 27, Glen Murphy Geisler, 28, of Elizabethton, was eating
dinner with a friend when he complained of feeling ill and said he
was unable to finish his meal. He lay down on the couch, began
snoring, and 15 minutes later, stopped breathing. Geisler was taken
to Sycamore Shoals Hospital where blood was drawn and analyzed by
medical staff.

Mountain States Health Alliance Laboratory conducted a toxicology
test which indicated Geisler had Benzodiazepine (similar to Valium),
cannabinoid (marijuana), cocaine, and opiates in his system.

He was pronounced dead at 1:46 a.m. by Coroner David Nichols. At 2:07
a.m., Detective Ed McGee was contacted by Capt. Bill Fraley. The
emergency room physician advised McGee that toxicology results
indicated a drug overdose.

Capt. Fraley informed him there did not appear to be any foul play.
Detective McGee then contacted Assistant District Attorney Mark Hill
to inquire about the possibility of conducting an autopsy and
provided him with facts surrounding the case and the opinion of the
physician.

Hill decided an autopsy was not to be conducted. Detective Greg
Workman was asked to contact Assistant District Attorney Ken Baldwin
to get his opinion.

Baldwin recommended an autopsy be conducted due to unusual
circumstances surrounding the death.

An order for autopsy was written by Baldwin, signed by a criminal
court judge, and issued to Quillen College of Medicine authorizing
examination of the deceased. The next day, Detective Workman was
contacted by 911 to respond to 708 Eisenhour St., in reference to
another death.

Linda Jenkins, 43, told officers that her live-in boyfriend, Jimmy D.
Taylor, 42, had gone to bed around 9 p.m. She said she went to bed
around 10:30 and heard Taylor snoring loudly, which was out of the
ordinary, and that he had been sweating profusely prior to going to
bed. Jenkins said she awoke at 3 a.m. and Taylor's body was cold. She
called 911 and administered CPR until Carter County Rescue Squad
arrived. On inspecting the body, Detective Workman observed needle
marks on Taylor's left arm, as well as on top of both feet. Jenkins
was unaware whether Taylor had a drug habit, according to police.

Workman observed marijuana in the area where Taylor was found, as
well as a syringe needle. Assistant District Attorney Mark Hill was
notified of the circumstances surrounding death and advised Detective
Workman that no autopsy was to be conducted. Elizabethton Police
Chief Roger Deal said he doesn't know whether the two deaths are
related. "It's very possible it was the same drug involved.

It looks more that way, but I can't say with any surety. ... An
autopsy was ordered on the first one and on the second one we had
blood drawn and sent off for toxicology." In the last several years
in Carter County there have been instances of persons receiving bad
drugs.

Asked whether it was possible that Geisler's and Taylor's deaths
might be linked to bad drugs, Deal said, "I would think so. But I'm
not an expert in the medical field so I don't know." Dr. Gretel
Harlan, one of two forensic pathologists performing autopsies at
Quillen College of Medicine, worked with medical examiners in Memphis
and Nashville before coming to East Tennessee. Based on her
experience, Harlan said, "If you think it's a drug overdose and no
obvious cause of death, particularly in a young person where you
don't have a medical history of something that might have killed them
and you don't find evidence that might have killed them, we routinely
did autopsies. "If the family is extremely resistant to having an
autopsy done, we can still do things like draw samples of urine and
blood and test that." But the results are not as conclusive, Harlan
said.

"You know whether or not you've got an overdose.

You don't necessarily know how they got the drug into their system
and you don't have other things you might need should you find that
it is a drug overdose and somebody says, 'Well, yes, I provided him
the drug, but it was because of his terminal cancer.' "If you haven't
done the autopsy, you don't know whether he's got a terminal cancer
or whether they're blowing smoke.

That's why, when we do a forensic autopsy, we do a complete autopsy.

We don't decide 'No, we won't look at the head,' because we don't
know that they're not taking an excess amount of pain medication
because they're having a cerebral hemorrhage," Harlan said. Autopsy
costs average around $2,000, she said. They are partially state
funded and partially county funded. "The cost depends on the case,"
Dr. Harlan said. "We just had one that was an embalmed body
(Geisler), where doing toxicology is going to be prohibitive, and yet
we're doing it because they think it is a drug overdose." Dr. Harlan
said the investigating police agency uses either the District
Attorney General's Office or the county medical examiner to write an
order for autopsy. "Unless it's going to result in charges against
somebody -- something they could prosecute -- (the District
Attorney's Office) doesn't really want to get involved." Autopsies
generally are not ordered in deaths that result from obvious medical
conditions, she said, such as a person with an extensive history of
heart trouble who goes into cardiac arrest.

By not conducting autopsies in such cases, the DA's office saves
taxpayers money. Assistant District Attorney Baldwin said the
decision to order an autopsy is a judgment call on the person to whom
the request is made. "You don't want to order an autopsy on a case
unless it has a potential for criminal activity having caused the
death.

The only reason we order autopsies is to prove that the cause of
death was by virtue of some criminal activity.

In a case of suicide, you don't need one, and it makes families
distraught to have their loved one dissected," Baldwin said. "It is a
form of murder to supply drugs to someone," he said. "If you can
determine who supplied the individual with the drugs on which they
overdosed, it's a form of homicide -- second-degree murder." Ralph
McDaniels "Mack" Myers, 47, 115 Bluefield Ave., was indicted May 1 on
second-degree murder charges following the death of Justin Vanover,
23, 327 S. Lynn Ave. Autopsy results indicated Vanover died from a
methadone overdose.

Myers is accused of supplying the methadone. Vanover's girlfriend,
Felicia English Younce, 19, Greenwood Drive, Johnson City, also was
indicted by the grand jury on a charge of criminal negligent homicide
after she allegedly delayed in getting Vanover medical attention. "In
that kind of case, you've got to prove by virtue of the autopsy, that
they died as a result of the drug overdose and not some other cause.

That's some elementary evidence you've got to have," Baldwin said,
before the District Attorney's Office can bring charges. Carter
County Sheriff John Henson said he believes an autopsy should be
ordered in any unexplained death, especially in those involving young
people. "If you don't know what killed that person, you don't know
whether there's been a crime committed or not. If you don't have that
autopsy, you can't prosecute unless you've got the evidence to back
it up," he said. Chief Deal said, "What we want to do as far as
Elizabethton Police Department is make sure we're not requesting
unnecessary autopsies, but on the same hand, we want to be sure that
if there is any suspicion, that we pass that information on to the
Attorney General or his assistant. "(Autopsies) are expensive, we
realize that, but you can't go shooting in the dark. You need to have
a little bit of evidence, or suspicion anyway, that would warrant
autopsies. "I don't want to wash any potential evidence aside just to
observe a cost-measuring safety, because I think sometimes we can
shortchange ourselves by watching pennies.

Everybody would suffer -- the whole criminal justice system. "On the
other hand, I don't want to waste taxpayer dollars on things we don't
need. You've got to look at it from an investigative view,
level-headed, and just try to do what's right."