Maryland Medical Examiner Office Taken Over by Health Department
Reorganization ends 84 years of independence for troubled agency
A new law taking effect July 1 fundamentally changes the organization of Maryland’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, removing it from the authority of an independent commission intended to shield the agency from political influence.
The 1939 law creating the OCME, the first statewide medical examiner system in the country, established the chief medical examiner under the authority of a five-member Postmortem Examiners Commission. This commission was the final word on matters such as hiring or firing the chief medical examiner and other key staff.
H.B. 977, signed by Gov. Wes Moore on May 16, designates the Postmortem Examiners Commission as an advisory committee and places the chief medical examiner — and the entire OCME — under the authority of the Secretary of Health. Within the department, the chief medical examiner now reports to the Deputy Secretary for Public Health Services.
Membership on the Postmortem Examiners Committee is comprised of the chairmen of the departments of pathology of the state’s two medical schools, the superintendent of the Maryland State Police, the state Secretary of Health, and the Baltimore City Health Commissioner.
Structuring the authority of the chief medical examiner under an independent commission was designed to limit the influence of political and public pressure, such as requests to expedite the investigation of Freddie Gray’s death in 2015, which ruled his death a homicide. No individual, such as the governor or secretary of health, could intimidate medical examiners with threats of firing or retaliation.
The new law contains a provision mandating that the Department of Health and the Postmortem Examiners Commission “may not interfere with the clinical findings or conclusions” related to forensic death investigations. Time will tell how the relationship works out in practice.
Once regarded as among the best medical examiner offices in the country, in recent years the OCME has been plagued with problems (Note: The author was executive assistant to the chief medical examiner from 2012 to 2022).
After former chief medical examiner David Fowler testified for the defense in Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd in April of 2021, former DC chief medical examiner Roger Mitchell, Jr., wrote an open letter calling for a review of deaths of people in police custody during Fowler’s tenure.
None of the in-custody deaths were investigated by Fowler — as chief he did not perform autopsies — but were assigned to the medical examiner staff.
Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh announced an audit of deaths in police custody and appointed a panel of experts to design the review. The audit design team delivered its 12-page report to Frosh on September 30, 2022.
The team identified 100 deaths during or shortly after police restraint in which no obvious cause of death, such as a knife wound, was found on the body. The team recommended these 100 deaths be reviewed by forensic pathologists.
In 2021, the Postmortem Examiners Commission appointed Victor W. Weedn as chief medical examiner to succeed Fowler, who retired at the end of 2019.
Workforce shortages became more severe over the course of a tumultuous year as medical examiners and other staff left the agency, resulting in a backlog of autopsy cases that became so critical the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was called in for help.
Weedn resigned from the OCME in February of 2022. Since then, the state has been unable to recruit a qualified candidate interested in serving as chief medical examiner.
In December of 2022, the Baltimore Banner filed a lawsuit against OCME over access to public records.
