Thursday, 4:30 PM
Chief medical examiner fired
(John Tlumacki/Globe Staff/file)
By Globe Staff
Governor Deval Patrick fired the state's chief medical examiner after a three-month internal investigation sparked by a series of high-profile blunders, which includes losing the body of a Cape Cod man who was buried in the wrong grave after an autopsy.
Dr. Mark A. Flomenbaum had been suspended in May as part of the fallout in the Executive Office of Public Safety that has included the resignations of the Massachusetts's top forensics official and the director the state crime lab.
In a statement e-mailed today, press secretary Kyle Sullivan said: "After a very careful and thorough investigation, and a hearing before the governor, the governor found that there were serious concerns relative to the managerial and administrative performance of Dr. Flomenbaum and therefore decided to remove him from his position as Chief Medical Examiner."
His firing was first reported today by the Boston Herald. Flomenbaum’s departure comes as the Patrick administration released a new independent analysis that found that the medical examiner's office was so mismanaged it was on the "verge of collapse."
The $267,000 analysis of the crime lab and medical examiner's office was performed by Vance, a private consulting firm in Virginia. Its findings, outlined in a 36-page report, include:
--No written policies and procedures or standard operating procedures on even
the most basic of functions.
--Little if any training of employees, even on critical functions.
--Little or no focus on basic health and safety issues of employees and visitors.
--Little or no evaluation of various practices in light of national best practices or
budgetary constraints.
--A lack of planning for needed resources, programs and systems to deliver
effective services and measured results.
--The existence of a creeping culture of indifference and a demoralized staff.
Flomenbaum was appointed by the Romney administration in 2005 to address problems at the troubled facility, which had misidentified bodies and made other serious mistakes.
In January it was disclosed that the crime lab had mishandled DNA test results in unsolved sexual assault cases, which led to investigations by the State Police, FBI, Vance, and the state inspector general's office.
Robert Pino, a 23-year civilian employee of the lab who testified in more than 240 criminal cases and helped set up the state's portion of the FBI database, was fired April 13, three months after the agency suspended him for allegedly mishandling test results.
On March 9, Selavka, director of the lab since July 1998 and one of Pino's supervisors, resigned under pressure. At the end of June, LaDonna J. Hatton, the undersecretary of forensic sciences, also resigned.
