Medical examiner office gets lambasted

Medical examiner office gets lambasted
Near 'collapse' reported due to mismanagement

By Peter Schworm, Globe Staff | August 4, 2007

The state medical examiner's office, long considered one of the worst in the country and wracked by a series of high-profile missteps this year, is on the "verge of collapse" from extreme mismanagement, according to a scathing independent review released yesterday.

State public safety officials said yesterday that they strongly supported the report and would move quickly to reform the troubled office, which is currently "barely able to fulfill its basic legal responsibilities" and will get markedly worse without immediate action, a state-hired consultant found.

But the chief medical examiner, Mark A. Flomenbaum, will not be around to help oversee the fixes. Governor Deval Patrick confirmed yesterday that he has fired Flomenbaum after a three-month internal investigation that revealed "serious concerns" about his performance.

Patrick suspended Flomenbaum in May after the medical examiner's office misplaced the body of a Cape Cod man, which State Police found buried in another man's grave. Flomenbaum's departure followed the resignations of the state's top forensics official and the director of the state crime lab after several blunders there.

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