The Shifting Story Of The Chasse Autopsy
Following this afternoon’s press conference, the Portland Police Bureau released a set of documents regarding the in-custody death of James Chasse.
Over on Jack Bog’s Blog, a reader said that the Bureau was claiming that “the autopsy concluded that it was an accidental fall by one of the officers onto James that caused the majority of his injuries”. At the time I first read that comment, this was not something I’d heard. But, indeed, the Bureau’s fact sheet (pdf) at least twice makes precisely that assertion.
Problem is, the findings of the medical examiner (pdf), including the autopsy report, as given to the attorneys of Chasse’s family and which then were released by them to the public, never say this.
Which leaves one of two possibilities.
Either the Portland Police Bureau and Chief Sizer simply are outright lying to the public when claiming that the medical examiner and autopsy “concluded that Mr. Chasse received the injury that ultimately caused his death when the officer and Mr. Chasse both fell to the ground” (as the Bureau’s fact sheet states).
Or, the report which the authorities provided to the Chasse family and which they then shared with the public isn’t, in fact, the actual medical examiner’s report.
Anyone out there in the local press going to bother to find out which one it is?
Addendum: Actually, there’s a third option. When the Bureau states that the medical examiner “concluded” that the injuries were sustained when a single officer accidentally fell onto Chasse, they perhaps might be referring not to the medical examiner’s report, which says nothing of the kind, but to her testimony before the grand jury itself.
Of course, that itself presents just as large a problem as the other two options outlined above: It would suggest that in her testmony Karen Gunson deviated from simply relating her findings as a medical examiner (as outlined, presumably, in the report which the Chasse family released to the public) and incorporated what the officers testified about their actions.
In other words, the third possibility is that Gunson testified not based upon the knowledge gleaned from the autopsy, but based upon the verbal explanations of the officers themselves, about which she could have neither direct nor indirect knowledge.
This third possibility perhaps is the most damning of all, as it would demonstrate, yet again, that both the medical examiner’s office and that of the district attorney need to come clean about their behavior in the aftermath of officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths.
Either they come clean, or they need to be swept clean.