When one pictures a doctor performing an autopsy of a murder victim, the image of an inadequately trained, unsupervised, part-time Peet's barista doesn't usually come to mind. And yet that is exactly who an ex-employee of the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner alleges was responsible for numerous autopsies in 2013. If true, this could call into question the accuracy of the office's findings and force the Public Defender's office to review scores of homicide cases.

The Examiner today reported on a sprawling account of alleged mismanagement taking pace at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner back in 2013. Primarily, at the time of her departure from the office, Dr. Judy Melinek gave a statement to prosecutors claiming that two technicians routinely conducted unsupervised autopsies of individuals at the instruction of then-chief medical examiner Dr. Amy Hart. It's this statement the Examiner has obtained.

Melinek says that the two technicians, Jana Tawney and Kristopher MacFerren, were frequently left on their own to do the work of Hart. Hart, whom the Chronicle reports was demoted in 2014 after her office developed a backlog of hundreds of cases, allegedly conducted few autopsies herself and instead told Tawney and MacFerren to do the work on her behalf — frequently without her supervision — despite their lack of adequate training.

"Sometimes [Hart] was in there for long periods of time, like during the cutting of the organs,” the paper reports Melinek's statement as reading. “But sometimes she’d just send [the technicians] in to take these homicides, X-ray them, document the injuries, unclothe them, and she wasn’t even physically in the room during that time.”

The paper also reports that, according to her (apparently now deactivated) LinkedIn account, Tawney was a part-time barista at Peet's while working in Hart's office. Tawney denied the allegations to the Examiner when reached for comment.

The District Attorney's Office told the Examiner that the City Attorney’s Office investigated at the time and found the claims to be unsubstantiated. Hart, the paper notes, is currently employed as a pathologist for the city and in 2014 was the second highest paid city employee with an annual salary of $479,652.21.

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