Lawyers demand Tarrant medical examiner investigation after mistakes in homicide cases
The Tarrant County Criminal Defense Lawyers Association is demanding an independent investigation into the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office after autopsy mistakes were discovered in dozens of homicide cases.
Board President Benson Varghese presented a resolution about the issues to the Tarrant County Commissioners Court on Tuesday morning.
The resolution calls for an “independent investigation into the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office and an external audit of the work performed by Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani and Deputy Medical Examiner Marc Krouse.” It also calls upon the court to consider whether Peerwani should continue as the Tarrant County medical examiner.
Krouse recently left the office after mistakes were found in more than 20 homicide cases where he performed autopsies.
One of those cases led to the body of a teenage victim being exhumed.
The resolution also stated that in March, a Tarrant County District Court judge found that Peerwani provided false, inaccurate, and misleading testimony in a death penalty case that ended in a conviction in 2006, Varghese said.
The Medical Examiner is appointed by the Tarrant County Commissioners Court and taxpayers pay nearly $11 million annually for its services, Varghese said.
Death penalty case
Tilon Lashon Carter, was convicted in 2006 for the murder and home invasion robbery of James Tomlin. Peerwani offered testimony during Carter’s trial.
In March, Tarrant County District Court Judge Mollee Westfall said Peerwani made “false, inaccurate or misleading” statements during his testimony.
Peerwani testified that Tomlin was suffocated, then later said that might not have happened. He failed to disclose that he found a pacemaker in Tomlin’s chest. The judge argued that could mean that Tomlin died of a cardiac issue, not a respiratory one.
The medical examiner also gave false testimony about teeth marks on Tomlin’s lip, saying that they were evidence of suffocation but said later that wasn’t necessarily the case, according to Westfall’s report, which was obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Tuesday.
Westfall recommended that Carter should get a new trial. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will decide.
In total, the judge said that Peerwani made at least 10 false, inaccurate or misleading statements.
Krouse missed a bullet
Autopsies performed by Marc Krouse came under review in November when Peerwani found inconsistencies in at least two autopsies Krouse performed in 2020.
Krouse was suspended from his duties in November and left the office in late April.
The case that began the review involved the shooting death of 19-year-old Alfredo Olivares, whose body had to be exhumed because Krouse had missed a bullet during the autopsy, according to court documents.
The second autopsy revealed several “major and minor” issues with the first, according to an audit summary of Krouse’s cases.
In early March, the Star-Telegram reviewed Krouse’s work and identified at least 40 homicide cases from 2019 to 2020 that he had been involved in. The newspaper found that Krouse performed the autopsies in at least six of those cases.
In total, 41 of Krouse’s autopsies were examined and more than 50 mistakes were found in 27 of them, according to court documents.
“In most cases, these did not necessarily impact the assignment of cause or the manner of death, the reports left questions unanswered and demonstrated lack of due diligence,” according to the summary.
For instance, in one case where a man was stabbed and set on fire, Krouse failed to identify some wounds as defensive and failed to clearly determine if the man was stabbed first.
This story was originally published April 27, 2021 at 1:20 PM.
