DEFENSE FAILS TO SUPPRESS KEY REPORT.

Byline: Howard Breuer Staff Writer

PASADENA - The attorney for a pediatrician charged with strangling a pregnant colleague failed again Friday to persuade a judge to withhold key evidence from the jury.

Michael Abzug, attorney for Dr. Kevin Paul Anderson, 41, of La Verne argued that the county coroner's report explaining how Dr. Deepti Gupta died should be suppressed because the 33-year-old Glendale woman was cremated before a defense witness could examine her.

Abzug said the coroner didn't determine whether marks on Gupta's neck were from an attacker or from her own fingers grabbing at her killer's hands.

But he said his expert - Dr. Dale H. Rice, a head and neck specialist at the University of Southern California - could have pinned it down and possibly provided evidence helpful to Anderson.

``They got rid of the body in a very hasty manner without making it available to us,'' Abzug said.

He suggested the coroner's findings be suppressed on the grounds that authorities intentionally destroyed evidence that could benefit the defendant.

Pasadena Superior Court Judge Teri Schwartz said the coroner had no choice but to release Gupta's body after the autopsy, and Gupta's family then had the right to dispose of her body as they saw fit.

``I just don't see this as a situation where testimony should be suppressed as a sanction because evidence was destroyed,'' Schwartz said.

Anderson, former head of pediatrics at St. Luke Medical Center, reportedly was upset when Gupta backed out of a planned joint practice in Pasadena.

Anderson has said Gupta threatened to tell people she was pregnant with his child. He said she also suggested she might harm his 8-year-old daughter.

The conversation is said to have occurred Nov. 11 on a high hillside turnout in the Angeles National Forest, near Mount Wilson. Anderson allegedly strangled Gupta with his hands and, with a Snoopy necktie, moved her from his car into hers, doused her body with gasoline and pushed her vehicle over a 230-foot cliff.

He told investigators the vehicle dropped from the cliff too fast for him to have torched Gupta's body, that he jumped out just in time to catch the cliff's edge.

The Coroner's Office examined her body the following morning, Nov. 12, and released it Nov. 13 to relatives, who cremated Gupta before sundown in accordance with the Hindu faith.

In recent appearances, Abzug also unsuccessfully tried to suppress Anderson's statement to sheriff's detectives, as well as evidence seized from his home, office and wallet.

But the coroner's findings are particularly crucial, said Deputy District Attorney Marian Thompson.

``It would have been a significant problem without the cause of death,'' she said.

Jury selection is expected to start Oct. 18. The attorneys expect the trial to take four weeks, possibly longer if the jury convicts Anderson and returns to decide whether to send him to Death Row.