Inmate’s Body Arrives for Autopsy Missing Brain, Spinal Cord

Efforts to clarify the death of inmate Danny Smith at Twin Towers Correctional Facility took an unusual turn Wednesday after Smith’s body was delivered for an autopsy in Pennsylvania without its brain and spinal cord.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office retained the brain and spinal cord when the department released Smith’s body to an Inglewood mortuary Aug. 14 because a specialist still needed to conduct a neuropathological exam, said spokesman Scott Carrier.

Cyril Wecht, a noted forensic pathologist hired by Smith’s family/ to conduct an independent autopsy that took place Tuesday, said retaining the brain and spinal cord was not inappropriate. He said it would not interfere with his investigation--as long as he can get prompt access to the results of that examination, along with other vital documents, such as the Los Angeles County coroner’s autopsy report and microscopic slides of Smith’s tissue.

“I don’t need the brain and spinal cord myself, I can look at their report,” Wecht said. “What counts now is the ability to get [all the information], examine it and put it together.”

But Leo Terrell, the attorney representing the Smith family, was irate.

“I think this is outrageous,” said Terrell, who has filed preliminary claims with Los Angeles County for up to $15 million in damages on behalf of Smith’s father and $50 million for the mother of the inmate’s child. He must give the county 45 days to investigate before filing suit.

Carrier said his office was not consulted during the shipping arrangements. He said he did not know whether his office had concluded the neuropathological exam or written up the report.

But he said he assumed that after that exam was concluded, Wecht would be permitted to look at the results.

“We are doing neuropathology,” Carrier said. “That’s what the holdup is. That’s why we have not come up with a cause of death.”

The circumstances of the Aug. 1 death--which the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department concedes occurred while Smith was in custody and in handcuffs--is the subject of an in-house investigation by the Sheriff’s Department and a preliminary probe by the FBI.

Smith’s fellow inmates say he died during a vicious beating by deputies who held him on the ground, face-down, with a flashlight under his throat, as he yelled that he had a bad heart and could not breathe and while he begged them not to kill him.

The Sheriff’s Department first said Smith attacked a deputy after his handcuffs were removed, then admitted that he had been handcuffed when the altercation occurred. Spokesmen said Smith was on psychotropic medicine and had been released from treatment for hypertension just days before the incident.

The L.A. County autopsy was conducted Aug. 6, but the coroner’s office has said additional tests could take as long as six to eight weeks. In the meantime, the Smith family’s lawyer decided to arrange an independent autopsy, which Wecht conducted Tuesday--minus Smith’s brain and spinal cord.

Wecht also needs to examine a long paper trail--the death certificate, death scene photos, slides, autopsy photos, the L.A. autopsy report, the homicide report, police report, and internal affairs criminal reports--pertaining to Smith’s death, Terrell said.

“They’re welcome to review our work,” Carrier said, but he added that many of the documents would have to come from the Sheriff’s Department, not the coroner’s office.

“I don’t know when those documents would be available,” said Deputy Bill Martin, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman. “There is still an ongoing investigation.”

Wecht said he sees no justification for the delay.

“How long can an investigation go on?” he said “We’re not talking about an international Mafia investigation here.”

Last week, a sheriff’s spokesman said two deputies and a county corrections officer allegedly present at the incident had been reassigned to desk jobs--but not relieved of their badges--pending the conclusion of the investigation.

Sheriff Sherman Block, who faces a runoff election against Lee Baca in November, said state law forbids him from revealing if the deputies had been investigated for previous allegations of excessive force at the jail.

“I’m not going to comment on anything during the investigation,” Block said. “When the coroner has their report, that will pretty much bring closure.”

Coroner’s spokesman Carrier volunteered that some people have suggested to him that the delay in determining the cause of Smith’s death was part of a “cover-up.”

“As far as the conspiracy theory goes, we don’t believe that to be fact,” he said. “There are too many people involved to have a cover-up.”