Pathologist’s breakdown jeopardizes Ala. cases

‘A major issue on appeal’
But Thomas’ lawyer argued that Glenn’s autopsy failed to document evidence in Hinton’s lungs to back up the conclusion that the man drowned. A judge refused to admit the autopsy report as evidence, and the jury Feb. 19 convicted Thomas of felony murder rather than a capital crime. She could get life in prison.

In another county, District Attorney Chris McCool won the conviction of Heather Pinion in the murder of Amy Files Fuller, whose remains were found in a well four months after she disappeared in 2001. Pinion was found guilty despite problems with Glenn’s autopsy.

“There weren’t many notes, and there were diagrams that weren’t marked,” McCool said. But the victim “was found at the bottom of a well with ligatures around her neck and a puncture in her side. It was a pretty clear path to figuring out it was murder.”

The incomplete autopsy “is going to be a major issue on appeal,” said Pinion defense attorney Donald Lambert, who has since been appointed to a judgeship.

In 2005, during the capital murder trial of a teenager accused in the shooting deaths of two policemen and a radio dispatcher, a former Glenn assistant struggled to explain Glenn’s notes, at one point trying to describe the wounds of a victim but finding that Glenn’s notes were about another body. The defendant, Devin Moore, was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to die.

Others pick up for McCool said there was no question the victims were shot by Moore, who confessed. “There were some extra legal hoops that I had to jump through, but I was raised on a farm and could have told you how those men were murdered,” the district attorney said.

Heavy workload
Glenn is hardly the first medical examiner to fall behind in his work. Pathologists work in a world where the smells and sights of death are constant, the workload is heavy and funding shortages are common. Backlogs and unfinished autopsy reports are a problem nationwide.

“Unfortunately it’s more common than you’d think, the lack of follow-through when it comes to the final report,” said Bruce A. Goldberger, president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.

The office where Glenn once worked no longer performs autopsies, because it was inadequate, Sparks said. Other pathologists are still completing cases he left undone.

Sparks is trying to hire two additional pathologists and a chief medical examiner, but funding is tight and Alabama’s starting pay for pathologists is low. Still, Sparks said he no longer wants any state pathologist working on his own.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with Johnny Glenn,” he said. “Sometimes you just need to get away from the table. What they deal with all day long, every day, is rough.”

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