Coroner’s Office Needs Reevaluation

On the job less than a year, Dexter Amend has turned the coroner’s office into his own political playground - firing a longtime employee, demanding office space in the morgue and turning down requests by homicide detectives for autopsies.

This week he topped the lot. Amend, admittedly anti-homosexual, used the private horror of a 9-year-old girl to spread ignorance and hate.

The coroner, the only elected official with access to autopsy reports, took to the media to announce that Rachel Carver had been sodomized in the years before her death. He said he felt compelled to speak out because homosexuals ruined Carver’s life.

Nevermind that homosexuals are not the only people who practice anal sex, nevermind that Carver was sexually molested by her father, a heterosexual. Forget that Carver died from a blow to the head - an act to which her uncle has confessed. Amend says it was homosexuality that destroyed her.

His ignorance aside, it’s outrageous that Amend would exploit Carver’s death to advance his own warped ideas about homosexuality, a subject where he’s shockingly misinformed. Rachel Carver lived a life of violence at the hands of family; Amend has twisted her death to suit his personal crusade.

The Spokane Human Rights Commission has called for Amend’s resignation. Amend says his comments were taken out of context and doesn’t remember speaking to a newspaper reporter.

This latest transgression points to a fundamental problem with the coroner’s office itself. The office, a vital one for any community, is responsible for investigating and ruling on the causes of unusual and tragic deaths. It shouldn’t be subject to the whim of politics or based on whose campaign generates the most name recognition.

There have been rumblings of a recall vote against Amend. It’s a relief, at least, that people are talking about this important office. If nothing else, the recent uproar reinforces the freeholder’s recommendation that the county switch to an appointed medical examiner system.

The coroner needs to be a level-headed manager with a background in medicine, a good listener who’s open to compromise. So far, Amend has shown he’s more volatile than qualified.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Anne Windishar/For the editorial board