Charges to be dropped against Dr. Cyril Wecht

[chiggerbit]

Charges are to be dropped against celebrity forensic pathologist

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.c ... ropped.php

Wecht Charges To Be Dropped
By Zachary Roth - June 2, 2009, 1:40PM

The charges against Dr. Cyril Wecht, the celebrity forensic pathologist and prominent Pittsburgh-area Democrat, will be dismissed.

U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, a Bush appointee who had been accused of pursuing a politically motivated prosecution against Wecht, this morning filed a motion to drop the charges, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Wecht, the former Allegheny County coroner, was charged in 2006 with misusing his office for private gain. Last year, his trial ended in a hung jury.

Buchanan said in a news conference that her decision to ask for the charges to be dropped was prompted by a judicial ruling last month -- finding that crucial evidence was inadmissible because prosecutors' search warrants were too general -- which she said made it difficult to move forward with the prosecution.

But she had to fight off the notion that the case should never have been brought in the first place. "If I could have a do-over, I'd still bring the case," she said.

Buchanan had a role in the US Attorney firings scandal. Kyle Sampson told Congress that he consulted with Buchanan -- who from 2004 to 2005 ran the Executive Office for United States Attorneys -- about the Bush administration's plan to carry out the firings.

Though the Obama White House had announced its intention to replace all the US attorneys upon taking office, as is customary, Buchanan announced earlier this year that she intended to lobby to stay in her post. It's not clear whether the end of the high-profile Wecht case will lead to her being replaced.

[chiggerbit]

From wiki:

"....Wecht became famous appearing on television and consulting on deaths with a high media profile. Some of the cases include; Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate, The Symbionese Liberation Army shootout, John F. Kennedy, The Legionnaires’ Disease panic, Elvis Presley, JonBenét Ramsey, Dr. Herman Tarnower (the Scarsdale diet guru), Danielle van Dam, Sunny von Bülow, the Branch Davidian incident, Vincent Foster, Laci Peterson and most recently Daniel and Anna Nicole Smith. During his career, Wecht has personally performed over fourteen thousand autopsies. He is a clinical professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and an adjunct professor of law at Duquesne University...
.

[chiggerbit]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/ ... /11/wecht/

The odd case of Dr. Cyril Wecht

There was a point last fall at which it seemed we were constantly learning of Bush-appointed U.S. Attorneys bringing dubious, politically-motivated charges against Democratic officials. Reader R.S. reminded me this week of one of the more striking examples out of Pennsylvania.

Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh, has long been the subject of questions about partisan prosecutions. But in 2006, Buchanan raised more than a few eyebrows when she went after former Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht, indicting him on multiple counts of various federal crimes, including theft from an organization that receives federal funds.

What, exactly, did Wecht do? Apparently, his transgressions included the improper use of the coroner's fax machine for private work. There was no evidence "of a bribe or kickback" and no evidence that Wecht traded on a conflict of interest.

But Wecht's a Democrat, and for a U.S. Attorney anxious to impress her superiors in the Bush administration, apparently that was enough.

This week, a jury mulled over Buchanan's case against Wecht. The case ended, at least in the short term, with a hung jury.

After fifty hours of deliberations, the jury was hung and obviously going to stay hung. Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Pittsburgh leaped at the chance for a re-trial, which has been scheduled for May.


If the view of a juror is any indication, conviction will be difficult. Rev. Stanley Albright, a juror who was excused last week when he became ill, told the AP, "I couldn't find the crime."


The jury foreman, who requested anonymity in light of the judge's request that jurors not yet speak publicly, told the Pittsburg Post-Gazette that he went into the trial with an open mind, but "as the case went on my thoughts were this was being politically driven."

You don't say.

The U.S. Attorney scandal has largely -- but not completely -- faded from public view, but I'm convinced the politicization of federal law enforcement will be remembered as the most outrageous part of Bush's domestic legacy.
― Steve Benen

[chiggerbit]

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKwecht.htm

Cyril H. Wecht received degrees from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (1956) and the University of Maryland School of Law (1962). As a medical expert, Dr. Wecht has performed over 14,000 autopsies and has supervised, reviewed or been consulted on approximately 30,000 additional post-mortem examinations.

Wecht was one of the medical experts who testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. During his testimony Wecht argued against the idea that President John F. Kennedy was shot by one gunman from the Texas Book Depository. It was partly as a result of Wecht's testimony that the final report stated that "the committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy."

For many years Wecht was coroner of Allegheny County. Other posts held by Wecht include clinical professor at the University of Pittsburgh schools of Medicine, Dental Medicine and Public Health and the professor at Duquesne University’s schools of Law, Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Wecht is the author of several books including Legal Medicine (1988) United States Medicolegal Autopsy Laws
(1989), Cause of Death: The Final Diagnosis (1994), Grave Secrets (1996), Forensic Sciences (1997) and Who Killed Jonbenet Ramsey? (1998)

During his career Wecht has served as president of the American College of Legal Medicine and the American Academy of Forensic Science, as well as chairman of the boards of trustees of both the American Board of Legal Medicine and the American College of Legal Medicine Foundation. He is also is a fellow of both the College of American Pathologists and the American Society of Clinical Pathologists.

[vigilant]

I'm too lazy to do the hours of due diligence, but I do sort of remember when this became a big issue.

I am not asking anyone else to due my hours of diligence, but in a one minute nutshell, was there "one" case or situation that buried this person in the judicial system? Or a small collection? Which one, or ones?

[MinM]

Mary Beth Buchanan of U.S. Attorney-Gate fame.

On September 5, 2001, a woman named Mary Beth Buchanan became the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Six days later United Flight 93 crashed in a field in her Justice Department jurisdiction, and not too far from the small Pennsylvania town she grew up in.

Faced with an immediate connection to the horrors of terrorism and its horrifying impact on the community she grew up in, Buchanan hit the ground running as new U.S. Attorney. She went right out and spent two years and $12 million in taxpayer funds on "Operation Pipe Dreams" rounding up 55 people who sell bongs on the internet (Pennsylvania is one of the two states where such products are illegal to sell).

In the midst of this global war on terror, it's only fitting Tommy Chong would be sentenced on the two year anniversary that day that will live in infamy. We all feel safer knowing he was behind bars for selling a harmless product that's legal to sell almost anywhere.

http://www.theagitator.com/2006/06/18/aka-tommy-chong/

Warren Commission Critic

Cyril Wecht

Mary Beth Buchanan has pursued the partisan priorities of the Bush administration

Ms. Buchanan has spent considerable official time and taxpayer money to advance the administration's agenda and her own ambitions. She has employed a full-time press agent -- a novelty to her office -- and misused senior staff to ghost-write her speeches and articles. While she is prosecuting Dr. Cyril Wecht, a Democrat and devoted public official, for allegedly abusing his office for private gain, she is employing taxpayer dollars to further her own career..
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013931.php

Watch Wecht 3 minutes into JFK II - the Bush Connection

more

[vigilant]

Thanks...that was an incapsulated nutshell I can grasp....

in the midst of our need to be protected, she's hunting bongs, Chongs, and Wecht...somebody should consfiscate her bong...

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Timing.

Mere hours to the 41st anniversary of the CIA assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy by his 'body guard,' Thane Eugene Cesar, at the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

LA coroner, Thomas Noguchi, established that RFK had been shot nearly point blank from the rear. The CIA's patsy, Sirhan Sirhan, was never that close and only in front of RKF. Noguchi was not allowed to testify at the patsy's trial.

Hypnoprogramming experts examined the patsy and determined that he had been programmed to be at the scene firing blanks.

So piling on unwarranted black marks and doubts about the integrity of experts like Cyril Wecht is about all the spooks can do.

[chiggerbit]

Previous discussion here:

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewt ... ight=wecht

[chiggerbit]

http://tinyurl.com/yav7lhe

Former U.S. Attorney-Turned-Congressional Candidate, To Talk Radio Host: I Could Sue You For Defamation
Eric Kleefeld | February 18, 2010, 5:42PM



Mary Beth Buchanan, a former Bush-era U.S. Attorney who is now running for Congress in Pennsylvania against Democratic Rep. Jason Altmire, may need to work on how she handles criticism of her tenure in office. Buchanan called into the radio show of local talker Marty Griffin, and apparently threatened him with a defamation suit.

Griffin had just hosted Dr. Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist, former Allegheny County Coroner, and prominent Pittsburgh-area Democrat, who had been prosecuted for alleged corruption by Buchanan. Democrats had accused Buchanan of launching a political prosecution -- the announcement of the charges had come close to the 2006 election, and became a data point in the U.S. Attorney scandals of late 2006 and early 2007. The charges were ultimately dropped.

During his interview, Wecht alleged that the case had cost $20 million to prosecute. Buchanan called in to take serious exception to this, saying that it could have only been $500,000 at most -- and told Griffin that he better get his facts right. "And you know, we still have defamation laws in this country. And to the extent that you keep repeating things are flat-out wrong, you're running afoul. That case could not have cost the government more than $500,000, and that's on the outside."

"So you're saying you're going to sue me?" Griffin replied. "Is that what you're saying, Mary Beth, because Dr. Wecht and others are suggesting? So you're gonna run for Congress, and you're threatening to sue me because we're suggesting that the case cost $20 million?"

"I'm saying that you have to know what you're talking about before you start repeating things," Buchanan replied.

Griffin challenged Buchanan to provide information on the salaries of all the people who had worked on the case, saying that he didn't believe it was only $500,000. Which led to this amusing exchange:
Griffin: Are you gonna answer my question?

Buchanan: I am answering your question, if you would shut up and let me talk.

Griffin: Oh, so this is how you're gonna run? Telling people to shut up and threatening them with lawsuits?

Buchanan: Listen, if you want the facts, I'm here to give them to you. If you hear want to hear yourself talk, then why do you even invite people to come on and be guests?

Griffin: Go ahead, Mary Beth.

Buchanan: Okay, thank you.

Griffin: You sound very defensive to me. It's a long road, Mary Beth, to run for office. This is just the beginning. This is just your toe in the water.

Believe it or not, they both seemed to have cooled down at least somewhat by the end of the interview, and Griffin invited Buchanan to appear on the show again.

[American Dream]

The Coroner in California's Sandra Cantu case was also the main witness against Dr. Cyril Wecht before the AG dropped the charges. He may be a key to understanding both the Cantu case and the Wecht case.

http://www.sacbee.com/breaking/story/1806895.html

Medical examiner in Cantu case back in spotlight


Associated Press
Published: Friday, Apr. 24, 2009 - 6:55 am


SAN FRANCISCO -- Though Melissa Huckaby's attorneys plan to withdraw their motion to exhume Sandra Cantu's body, the prosecution and defense remain on a collision course over the forensic evidence from her autopsy.

The defense is attacking the credibility of the pathologist whose findings will be used to support charges that Melissa Huckaby raped the 8-year-old -- an allegation that could bring the death penalty if the one-time Sunday school aide is convicted. Huckaby is scheduled to make her second court appearance Friday.

At the center of the conflict is San Joaquin County's chief medical examiner, Dr. Bennet Omalu, who has been in the spotlight before.

The 40-year-old neuropathologist gained national media attention for his research on the damaged brains of dead NFL players.

He is also a government witness in a federal corruption case against his former boss, celebrity pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, who has earned millions of dollars investigating high-profile deaths, including those of Elvis Presley and JonBenet Ramsey.

In a phone interview with The Associated Press before a judge issued a gag order in the Huckaby case, Public Defender Peter Fox questioned Omalu's objectivity.

Several attorneys in his office have complained that Omalu's opinions in other homicide cases they were defending were biased toward the prosecution, said Fox, who declined to detail specific cases where defense attorneys have questioned Omalu's work.

Omalu could not comment on Fox's claims because of the gag order, according to a San Joaquin County Sheriff's spokesman.

The coroner's office has not released its report on Sandra's autopsy or announced how she died. But Huckaby's attorneys said in their motion that medical examiners found Sandra had suffered "genital trauma" and that the finding led prosecutors to accuse 28-year-old Huckaby of rape as well as murder.

"It's all based on one person's word," said Fox.

Omalu's former colleagues from his long stint in the coroner's office in Pittsburgh, Pa., described him as a highly intelligent, dedicated pathologist.

"Naturally a defense attorney's job is to attack a doctor because typically victims in homicide cases have died violent deaths," said Mark V. Tranquilli, an Allegheny County deputy district attorney. "His character is among the best."

Melissa Huckaby's attorneys argued that if the defense had no chance to examine Sandra's body, Huckaby would have no way to refute the findings on Sandra's alleged injuries. Fox announced this week that the motion would be withdrawn after Omalu told them he had preserved the relevant tissue samples, which defense experts could also test.

Huckaby was arrested on suspicion of Sandra's murder less than a week after farmworkers found the missing Tracy girl's body stuffed in a suitcase in an irrigation pond earlier this month.

Huckaby was charged days later with murder with three special circumstances: kidnapping, lewd or lascivious conduct with a child and rape with a foreign object. A conviction on any of the three special circumstances would make Huckaby eligible for the death penalty. She has not entered a plea.

Experts said that proving a child was raped based only on forensic evidence has advantages and disadvantages for prosecutors.

"Internal trauma can be telling, especially in a girl this age, because we can make the inference she has not had any recent sexual experience, at least not consensual," said Erin Murphy, a criminal law professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

At the same time, genital injuries in children can occur during normal childhood activities such as running and jumping, Murphy said.

Prosecutors will also try to use Sandra's DNA as evidence if they have samples from whatever object they will claim Huckaby used to rape the girl, Murphy said.

Omalu has worked as San Joaquin County's chief medical examiner since 2007.

In the eight years before coming to California, he worked for Wecht simultaneously as a pathologist in the coroner's office and for Wecht's private forensics company.

Wecht is currently facing multiple federal counts of fraud and theft. Prosecutors allege that while county coroner, he used public employees and facilities to conduct examinations for his own business.

Last year, Omalu testified that he examined brains for Wecht's private clients while at the morgue.

It was also at the coroner's office that Omalu examined the brain of former Pittsburgh Steelers lineman Terry Long, who killed himself by drinking antifreeze.

Omalu found that Long suffered from chronic brain swelling, or "punch-drunk syndrome," caused by frequent blows to the head during football games. Omalu argued the syndrome led to the depression that ended with Long's suicide.

He has since studied the brains of several other former NFL players who died young. He has gained national attention for pushing the league to acknowledge his claim that football-related head injuries can lead to permanent mental damage.

Omalu received his medical degree from the University of Nigeria College of Medicine in 1991, according to his California medical license. He is currently an adjunct professor of pathology at the University of California, Davis.

[MinM]

Just finished watching the movie Concussion and as AD indicates in the previous post much of this bogus prosecution of Cyril Wecht goes back to the work Dr Bennet Omalu was doing in his coroner's office exposing the effects of concussions in the NFL. At least that's what the movie strongly implied.

The movie never gets into Wecht's work on JFK, RFK, or any other cases like that. Only that the prosecution and persecution of Wecht was a backdoor way for the NFL to stop Omalu. Given what was done to derail Jim Garrison you'd have to think those other things played a role but that doesn't discount the power and reach of the NFL. It's very plausible they would and did try to stop Omalu through Wecht. After all Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor made her bones by helping the NFL.

By the way Concussion was a decent movie. Especially considering what a tough story that is to tell in that form. Although the Frontline piece that told this same story was much more compelling. Which makes sense when you consider that Frontline took on the NFL in their first ever episode. It's also worth noting that Albert Brooks was very good as Cyril Wecht.
***

Via Covert History:

Saturday, April 12, 2008
Subject: An Appeal for Justice

(Via Ed Sherry this email appeal from the son of noted coroner and JFK assassination critic Cyril Wecht, whose recent trial ended in a mistrial).


Dear Friends, Colleagues and Students,

As many of you know, the U.S. Attorney's Office here in Western Pennsylvania Tuesday announced its intention to re-try my father, former Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht, on miscellaneous charges of "public corruption" immediately on the heels of U.S. District Judge Arthur Schwab's declaration of a mistrial following the government's first such effort. The prosecutor not only wasted no time in doing so, but did not even take the customary and legally prudent step of polling the jurors to determine how they were split.

Without getting into my own thoughts on the original or ongoing motives for this prosecution, I feel it important to point out that this jury of my father's peers, following nearly two months of testimony by 44 prosecution witnesses, and despite the fact that the defense did not find it necessary to call any witnesses to the stand, were unable to return a guilty verdict on even a single count -- and this despite the fact that they'd extended their deliberations, under the judge's orders, far past the point of deadlock. By any reasonable standard, the case against my father would appear to lack substance at this point in time.

I'm writing to you as a son, as a Western Pennsylvanian, and as an American, to ask you to share your own opinions on this matter with the editors of our leading local daily newspapers, as well as with U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan herself. While Ms. Buchanan will not be easy to dissuade from her chosen course of action, there is reason to believe that, faced with ample public pressure, she will have no choice but to consider her office's alternatives. And in a society (and region) faced with the multiple blights of gang warfare, drug trafficking, child pornography and other criminal activities, there is no question she has some "alternatives" to pursue.

By contrast, if a second trial is permitted to proceed, as scheduled, on May 27, the costs to both my father (financial, professional and otherwise) and to the taxpayers of Western Pennsylvania (already conservatively estimated at over $200,000) will continue to climb.

If you have any thoughts on this matter, please make your voice heard by writing to one or more of the addresses listed below. The time to act is now, before new charges are filed.

On behalf of my father, my family, and the cause of justice, I thank you.

Sincerely,

Ben Wecht

p.s. For those unfamiliar with the case, here are some pertinent links to recent news items:

Retry Wecht? No
Some jurors skeptical of case against Wecht
The Wecht case: pronounce it dead
It's over: There is no need for a second Wecht trial


Federal prosecutors have announced that they plan to retry Wecht on all 41 counts.

Judicial Committee Chairman John Conyers is disturbed by reports that the FBI has been interviewing jurors in the Wecht trial.


I am deeply troubled by reports of FBI agents contacting former jurors who failed to convict Dr. Wecht. Whether reckless or intended, it is simply common sense that such contacts can have a chilling effect on future juries in this and other cases. When added to the troubling conduct of this prosecution, there is the appearance of a win at all costs mentality. The committee continues to investigate this matter.
Sign a petition on behalf of Dr. Wecht.

[elfismiles]

In the rush to harvest body parts, death investigations have been upended
By Melody Petersen Staff Writer
Oct. 13, 2019, 3 AM
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/ ... -autopsies

After reviewing the autopsy report, Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist who has consulted on many prominent death investigations, questioned the coroner’s ability to make that determination when the bones and skin had already been removed.

“We can’t be sure the bones weren’t fractured,” Wecht said. “This could have been a manslaughter case.”

The case is one of dozens of death investigations across the country, including more than two dozen in Los Angeles and San Diego counties, that The Times found were complicated or upended when transplantable body parts were taken before a coroner’s autopsy was performed.

In multiple cases, coroners have had to guess at the cause of death. Wrongful-death and medical malpractice lawsuits have been thwarted by early tissue harvesting. A death after a fight with police remains unsettled. The procurement process caused changes to bodies that medical examiners mistook as injuries or abuse. In at least one case, a murder charge was dropped.

other RI threads featuring "Cyril Wecht":

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/search.php?keywords=%22Cyril+Wecht%22&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sr=topics&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search