Complaint Could Affect Gregg County Autopsies

LONGVIEW — A consultant for legal proceedings involving medical examiners aims to file a complaint this week against the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office, often used in Gregg County autopsies. That’s according to the Longview News-Journal. “This is a company masquerading as a medical examiner,” Austin consultant David Fisher said. “It is illegal, and it follows that all the autopsies are illegal. …All your jail deaths are going to be illegal, and this is going to open the door on a whole bunch of civil rights lawsuits.”

Fisher said the Fort Worth-based office, run by Dr. Nizam Peerwani, performed the autopsy on jail inmate Amy Lynn Cowling, whose heirs settled their wrongful death lawsuit for $1.9 million in 2013. Peerwani’s deputy chief, Dr. Marc Krouse, performed a recent autopsy on Bobby Joe Madewell Jr., a jail inmate who died in March after jail personnel used a stun gun to subdue him.

A 2009 Fort Worth Weekly article on Fisher’s dispute with Peerwani detailed repeated forays Fisher has launched against medical examiners beginning in 2001, when he was credited with contributing to the reorganization of the Travis County Medical Examiner’s office. Fisher’s complaints are wide-ranging, but at the core of the one he intends to file this week is a strict interpretation of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure section on medical examiners. The code says those officers are appointed by a county commissioners court.

The executive assistant and spokeswoman for the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s office said Friday the office was not aware of the impending complaint and had no comment about it. “Our doctors here are not county employees, they are contract employees,” spokeswoman Linda Anderson said. “They are hired by our (county) commissioners — they appointed Dr. Peerwani, and Dr. Peerwani in turn hires the doctors for this office with the approval of the commissioners.”