After Curtice incident, WA coroners say best practice for drugs found during autopsies is to secure, document them

YAKIMA – When he said he had been poisoned, Yakima County Coroner Jim Curtice said his office’s policy was to grind up drugs found on bodies and flush them in the toilet.

And the only record of the drugs was a notation on the autopsy report, Curtice told Yakima police detectives.

But the head of the state coroner’s association said that is not a best practice for handling drugs, and Yakima County’s chief deputy coroner said better record keeping has been implemented in the office since police found that Curtice was snorting drugs he took from dead bodies.

“These items are considered evidence. They should be secured, there should be a chain of custody form signed by whomever handled them,” said Hayley Thompson, Skagit County Coroner and president of the Washington Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners.

Curtice has been on leave since Yakima police recommended charging him with making false statements to police, evidence tampering and official misconduct after finding that he had faked a claim that someone in his office had poisoned him, and that he had actually been using drugs he found on dead bodies in the course of his duties, according to Yakima police.

The recommended charges, all gross misdemeanors, were referred to the Ellensburg City Attorney for a charging decision due to conflicts of interest in Yakima County. Gross misdemeanors carry a statutory maximum sentence of one year in jail.

Curtice went to police Aug. 27, a day after his wife had found him unconscious in his office. Curtice said a drug test at a local hospital found he had cocaine in his system, and his own test on himself found fentanyl in his system, as well as cocaine and fentanyl in his workout drink powder and the water in an electric kettle in his office, according to a YPD report.

Curtice said he fell ill after taking a sip of an energy drink, the report said.

In the report, Curtice said Chief Deputy Coroner Marshall Slight was the most likely suspect in poisoning him. But after Curtice failed a lie detector test, he confessed that he had been taking the drugs he found on bodies and snorting them in his office three times a week for several months, and that he had spiked his drink powder and kettle to support his claim he was poisoned.

During the investigation, Curtice described the office’s method for handling drugs that were found on bodies in noncriminal investigations. In the report, Curtice said that any drugs that were found were crushed in a small blender and then flushed down a toilet.

“He stated that was not what they were supposed to do,” Lt. Chad Janis wrote in his report. “I asked what they are supposed to do. He stated that they should be taking the pills to the drug take-back boxes at the sheriff’s office. Instead, they grind them up and flush it down the toilet, which is probably not environmentally correct.”

In criminal investigations, police would take the drugs as evidence.

When detectives asked for a record of the drugs that were found, Curtice said that he noted them on autopsy reports and would have to consult each report to get a tally.

While offices have different procedures, Thompson, with the state coroner’s association, said there are recommended practices from the International Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners and the National Institute of Justice.

Those practices include safety precautions such as wearing gloves, securing drugs and documenting everything about the drugs and who has handled them.

In her office, Thompson said she tries to ensure that drugs are never brought into the office, and if any drugs are found on a body, police are notified immediately.

At the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, any drugs found during a death investigation are documented and secured, using the same procedures that police use in handling evidence and establishing a chain of custody, said Kate Cole, spokesperson for the King County Department of Public Health.

That means locking any drugs in a vault in a locked room where access is restricted. When they are no longer needed for testing, the drugs are turned over to the King County Sheriff’s Office for destruction or given to the agency investigating the death for its investigation, Cole said.

Slight said the office used to flush ground-up drugs down the drains in the past, but during his tenure in the past 16 years, they have been ground up and put in a biohazard receptacle.

“I try not to bring the pills from the scene,” Slight said. “Most of the time, police will take them from the scene.”

Slight said the reporting process has changed since Curtice’s incident, with a log now being maintained rather than noting it on each autopsy report. And if any drugs are found in an autopsy involving foul play, police will take the drugs as evidence, Slight said.

In 2023, the coroner’s office assumed jurisdiction over 802 of the 2,093 deaths in the county. Of those deaths, 95 were drug or alcohol overdoses, with fentanyl a factor in 65 of them.