The following day, July 31, 2007, Harris County Assistant Medical Examiner, Dr. Darshan Phatak, conducted Shannon’s autopsy. Phatak had passed his board-certification exam in forensic pathology and joined the Medical Examiner’s office in the previous year. As was customary, the investigating officer, Millard Waters of the Houston Police Department, attended the autopsy. There, Waters shared his theory with Phatak that Dean was the shooter, and expressed his hope that the autopsy would confirm his suspicions. He stressed that the position of the gun would be important: if the gun was fired with the handle upward it was likely a murder; if it faced downward, as Dean had recounted, it was likely a suicide. During the autopsy, Waters pointed out what appeared to be an imprint of the pistol’s front sight in the five o’clock position with respect to the entrance wound, and another mark at about the eleven o’clock position apparently corresponding to the weapon’s ejector rod. Waters observed that these impressions were inconsistent with Dean’s description of the shooting. Waters also brought to Phatak’s attention a dark line on Shannon’s arm. Phatak examined it, and concluded it was not the result of a suicide attempt . . .

A week later, on August 6, 2007, Phatak met to discuss the case with Waters and other officials. Such meetings were a normal practice for medical examiners. In this meeting, Phatak examined the gun used in the shooting. He also examined photos of the wound. Holding the gun, Phatak lay down on the floor and demonstrated the manner in which Dean described Shannon shooting herself. He explained that he had observed abrasions around the entrance wound: a crescentic abrasion in the 11 o’clock position, and linear abrasions at the 4 and 5 o’clock positions. He observed that the crescentic abrasions corresponded to the gun’s ejector rod, and the linear abrasions to the gun’s front sight—meaning that the gun was fired in a “handle up” position, the opposite from the gun position in Dean’s description . . .

Following the meeting, Phatak viewed part of Dean’s videotaped interview, the less than five minutes during which Dean described how Shannon had shot herself. He found that during this part of the video Dean was never instructed to place the gun against his head in exactly the way it was positioned during the shooting.