CORONER'S AUTOPSY DELAYS COULD LEAVE EVIDENCE DOA.

Byline: TROY ANDERSON Staff Writer

Short of space and staff, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office has seen its case backlog surge sharply this summer, leading to autopsy delays and decomposition of bodies that could compromise trial evidence, officials report.

The Coroner's Office has seen only a 3 percent increase in cases, from 5,539 to 5,714 in the first seven months of this year compared with 2005, but the average number of bodies has jumped by one-third, agency officials said. Autopsies now can take up to 10 days to complete rather than the normal two to four days.

Coroner's Office Chief of Operations Craig Harvey said he is not certain what has caused the increase, but noted that in recent weeks his office confirmed five heat-related deaths out of 14 suspected cases and there have been several multiple-death cases involving traffic crashes and homicides.

The problems, building for years, have gotten so bad that bodies now sometimes have to be stacked to accommodate them all.

``This summer the Department of Coroner has experienced a drastic increase in the number of new cases it examines,'' Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran and Director Anthony Hernandez wrote in a letter last week to Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen.

``This increase ... overextended the capacity of staff to handle critical cases in a timely and efficient manner. This situation has resulted in considerable delays in the completion of our forensic examinations.''

Typically, autopsies are completed in two to four days after a body arrives at the Coroner's Office. But officials said autopsies now can take up to five times longer to complete.

``These delays have the unwanted effect of accelerating the decomposition process,'' the officials wrote. ``Unfortunately, decomposition affects the quality of the examination and consequently our ability to determine cause and manner of death. In certain situations, such delays could compromise evidence collection for the courts, and expose the county to potential litigation.''

The district attorney and judge who presides over the criminal courts could not be reached for comment Thursday on whether they were aware of any botched autopsies that may have compromised homicide cases.

Coroner's officials asked for more investigators and support staffers over the next three years to support a second shift of workers that would allow faster turnaround and handle fluctuations in the department's ever-increasing caseload.

The letter came a week before the Board of Supervisors is set to vote on whether to spend $32 million to renovate the coroner's facilities on Mission Road and design a new 4,000- to 5,000-square-foot crypt to ease overcrowding.

In a June report to the board, Janssen said the existing facility is too cramped for autopsy and forensic laboratory operations. He also said its heating, ventilating, air-conditioning, electrical and other building systems have significantly deteriorated.

The board requested the report after employees earlier this year decried the conditions, saying some bodies were infested with maggots and workers had been double- and triple-stacking bodies for years due to a lack of adequate space.

Some of the office's crypts, designed to hold about 325 bodies, regularly exceed 400 as a result of population growth, immigration and the difficulty in locating immigrants' next of kin, who often live abroad.

The average number of bodies at the facility has risen from 316 in 2004 to 414 this year.

Of 410 corpses at the facility during May 21-28, 29 percent were pending identification or identification of next of kin, while 38 percent were retained pending a response from next of kin regarding final disposition, Janssen wrote in his report.

About 33 percent were awaiting cremation, he said.

In an effort to decrease the number of corpses stored at the crypt, the Coroner's Office in May contracted with three crematories to reduce the backlog.

In June, the supervisors gave the Coroner's Office $645,000 to hire more investigative and support staffers, pay for an additional transport van and provide funding for three crematory services contracts.

But a coroner employee, who requested anonymity for fear of jeopardizing their job, said Thursday that little has changed.

``Because of the overcrowding, evidence is going to be compromised. From what I see, the bodies are still double- and triple-stacked. That means you are doubling up or tripling up homicide cases, which means you have cross-contamination,'' the employee said.

Anna Pembedjian, justice deputy to Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, said Thursday that the supervisor is very concerned about any potential compromises of evidence in homicide cases.

But she questioned whether increasing staffing over the next three years would fix the problem.

``We need a further explanation of how many of the pending cases are at risk of that happening and what we can do immediately to solve the problem,'' Pembedjian said.

Harvey said county officials have already told him they don't have sufficient funding to give his office the $3 million it requested for a second shift.

``We are going to do some internal adjustments to see if we can pour some more resources at the problem to see if we can get caught up, rearrange some schedules to address the problem more directly,'' Harvey said.

``This memo is simply a precautionary memo to the board to let them know what we're experiencing and that we're doing our best to handle it and offer some possible solutions.''

troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com

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