The city's medical examiner's office has lost its national accreditation, but a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, which handles local criminal prosecutions, said city prosecutors don't expect it to affect cases moving forward.
The accreditation, which is voluntary, comes from the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME). The group withdrew its accreditation of the city's medical examiner's office in March, but the Washington Examiner first reported the news last night.
Although reports from the medical examiner’s office often serve as key evidence in homicide cases, U.S. attorney office spokesman Bill Miller said attorneys “do not expect this issue to have any direct impact on our cases.”
“The view of the office is that these developments will not affect us legally,” he said, although he declined to elaborate further.
NAME Executive Director Denise McNally confirmed today that the group revoked the accreditation on March 16. She referred questions about why the office lost accreditation to the group’s chairman, Dr. David Fowler. Fowler, the chief medical examiner for Maryland, did not immediately return a request for comment.
D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), who chairs the council’s Committee on the Judiciary, said the accreditation was revoked because the city's chief medical examiner, Dr. Marie-Lydie Pierre-Louis, is not board-certified. NAME was aware that Pierre-Louis was not board-certified – Mendelson said she finished her training too long ago to be eligible to apply – but had granted provisional accreditation in 2008.
Beverly Fields, chief of staff for Washington’s medical examiner, said in a phone interview today that accreditation is not required for the office to function effectively, noting that the office had not been accredited by NAME from 1970 until 2008.
Mendelson said that while accreditation is unlikely to have a “big impact” on prosecutions, he added that he sees it as a subtle distinction that can potentially add value to an examiner's report during a trial.
Local defense attorney David Benowitz agreed, saying that if a case comes down a “battle of experts” over the cause of death, the office’s lack of accreditation could be raised as an issue.
“There is no doubt that being board-certified is better than not being board-certified,” he said.
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