X-Message-Number: 7695 Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 16:16:49 -0700 From: David Brandt-Erichsen <> Subject: Florida coroner troubles From February 16 Tampa Tribune LAW LETS MEDICAL EXAMINERS DISPOSE OF BODIES WITHOUT FAMILY GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) - If your body comes under the authority of a Florida medical examiner after you die, your troubles may be just beginning. Your skull, parts of your brain - or any other body part or organ - can be legally seized by the medical examiner without your family ever knowing. And in Alachua County or one of the five other counties that fall under the jurisdiction of Eighth District Medical Examiner William Hamilton, your parts could well end up as fodder for research at the University of Florida. "We don't usually run around telling everyone, 'We kept this part of the liver, this part of the heart,'" Hamilton said. But there should be a limit on what a medical examiner can take from a body, said Gainesville attorney Tom Kurrus, who unsuccessfully sued Hamilton on behalf of the family of Rita Melton, a 32-year-old woman whose head was cut off under Hamilton's supervision and given to prominent UF forensic anthropologist William Maples, who used it for research. "Sometimes I think Dr. Hamilton views the bodies of dead loved ones as a gift to the world of science and academics," Kurrus said. Circuit Judge Nath Doughtie last year decided in Hamilton's favor in the case by finding that cutting off Rita Melton's head and turning it over to Maples was "well within Dr. Hamilton's rights," a ruling that has focused attention on the laws regulating the state's public medical examiners generally and Hamilton's practices in particular. After Melton's head was removed in Hamilton's office, it went to Maples' UF laboratory. The skull then became part of a Maples research project, used by one of his graduate students as part of her master's thesis. It also was used by Maples to help perfect an experimental human identification technique that generates outside private income for Maples. Hamilton never asked permission from Melton's mother or from any other family member to take Melton's head. He refused the family's request to view Melton's body, which was cremated the same day he released it. He failed to inform sheriff's deputies or the state attorney of what he'd done, though Melton was an apparent murder victim whose death was the source of a continuing investigation. He failed to note on the public record autopsy report that the head had been cut off, though he noted other tissue samples he had removed. Hamilton's actions apparently were legal under Florida law, which lay out the scope of a medical examiner's duties and responsibilities. They also were permissible under the rules of the Medical Examiners Commission. "I wouldn't disagree with it," said Joe Davis, a long-time Dade County medical examiner who helped draft the state's medical examiner statute and served as chairman of the Medical Examiners Commission when many of the commission's rules were established. The statute and the rules are vigorously defended by the state's medical examiners themselves - a group of 23 pathologists who jealously guard their independence and authority. "One of the strongest parts of the medical examiner system in this state, I believe, is our total independence," said Joan Wood, the Pinellas County medical examiner who currently serves as chairman of the Medical Examiners Commission. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7695