Steward said it still stings that San Joaquin County Sheriff-Coroner Steve Moore ruled Humphreys' death an accident -- especially knowing that his office had evidence about the Taser that was withheld from the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy.

“It was only reported that he was tased twice and in reality he was tased 31 times,” she said. “I'm not sure how that can be overlooked or swept under a carpet like it was.”

Questions about Humphreys’ death surfaced last week when the county’s chief forensic pathologist resigned, accusing Sheriff Moore -- who oversees the coroner’s office -- of meddling in the investigations of deaths in which law enforcement officers were involved.

Dr. Bennet Omalu -- best known for his discovery of a traumatic brain injury in football players and played by Will Smith in the movie "Concussion" -- raised the Humphreys case, along with several more recent officer-involved deaths, in memos released last week accusing the sheriff of repeatedly withholding investigative reports and certifying deaths as accidents in order to protect officers.

In an Aug. 22, 2017, memo -- one of several he wrote this year to document what he sees as wrongdoing by the sheriff -- Omalu said that in the Humphreys case, “information was intentionally withheld from me by the sheriff, in order to mislead me from determining the case to be a homicide.”

At the time of Humphreys’ death Omalu had been with the county less than a year. He wrote that he had initially thought the suppression of evidence was “an anomaly” but has since come to regard it as “routine.”

Physicians Associations Call for Creating an Independent Medical Examiner

The accusations raise questions more broadly about the independence of death investigations in a sheriff-coroner system, in which forensic pathologists work under a law enforcement officer, according to the California Medical Association and the San Joaquin Medical Society.

“The issue of diminished public trust in the autopsy process is not new,” Dr. Grant Mellor, president of the county medical society, wrote in a letter to the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors last week.

Citing related allegations in Santa Clara County, Mellor and the president of the statewide medical association, Dr. Theodore Mazer, called on San Joaquin County officials to immediately create an independent medical examiner’s office and remove control of coroner functions from the sheriff.

San Joaquin is one of 50 California counties that have an elected sheriff-coroner, while the remaining eight, including San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, have independent medical examiners.

Sheriff Calls Accusations of Interference False

Sheriff Moore has denied Omalu’s allegations. In a statement on Dec. 6, the day after Omalu’s resignation, Moore wrote that he had never interfered with forensic examinations.

“I would never try to control, influence, or change the opinions of Dr. Omalu or any pathologist working on a case,” he said.

The San Joaquin County district attorney is investigating the allegations.

Evidence Withheld Distorted, Delayed Autopsy Results

Barbara Steward and her daughters filed a wrongful death lawsuit in 2009 against the state of California, the CHP and the officer who fired the Taser. In a deposition to an attorney for the family, Omalu described what happened when he conducted the autopsy.

Omalu said the sheriff’s deputy investigating the death initially told him that the CHP officer who chased Humphreys to that freeway median fired his Taser “twice.”

Omalu said he asked sheriff’s investigators for the Taser printout that shows the number of times the trigger was pulled and the length of each electrical shock. He said he kept Humphreys’ autopsy file open for six months, waiting for the report.

When he couldn’t get a copy, he based his findings on the evidence available to him. He wrote that the death was likely caused by a head injury from the crash, and -- in the cover sheet accompanying the autopsy report -- he advised the sheriff that the death was an accident.

Omalu testified that two years later he got a phone call from the deputy district attorney assigned to the case. Tori Verber Salazar asked him if he had seen the Taser report. Omalu told her he hadn’t and, according to his deposition, Verber Salazar replied, “I thought as much.” She faxed him the report.

When Omalu finally saw the 31 Taser discharges -- subjecting Humphreys to 2½ minutes of electrical current -- he no longer considered the death an accident. He amended his autopsy report to state that Humphreys had died from repeated electrical shock when police intervened. And he advised the sheriff that the death was a homicide. In forensic pathology, the definition of homicide is a “death at the hands of another.” The term does not ascribe motive or guilt.

According to California government code, determining the cause of death -- what killed a person -- is the purview of the forensic pathologist, in this case Omalu, but certifying the manner of death -- whether a person’s death is an accident, a homicide, a suicide, a result of natural causes or undetermined -- is the job of the sheriff-coroner.

On Humphreys’ death certificate Sheriff Moore listed the manner of death as an accident -- both initially and after Omalu advised him the death should be considered a homicide.

