Daniel Beekman: Yakima County will pay embattled coroner to resign

SEATTLE – Yakima County will pay embattled coroner Jim Curtice an extra six months salary in exchange for Curtice’s resignation, officials decided Tuesday.

Curtice may have signed the agreement as soon as Wednesday, said his attorney, Bill Pickett, who described it as “good for all parties.”

Curtice has been on paid leave since September, when police accused him of taking illicit drugs from dead bodies in the course of his work, snorting the drugs in his office and then lying about it. He’s facing criminal charges and questions about his work as coroner, including his investigation of a disturbing death inside the Yakima County jail. He’s also been facing a recall attempt.

Most other county leaders called on Curtice to resign on his own months ago.

The agreement approved Tuesday by the Yakima Board of County Commissioners says Curtice will receive $63,774 to resign. That sum is equal to six months of his salary, minus $3,500 that Curtice will pay for the county’s cadaver dog, a chocolate lab named Justice that Curtice wants to keep.

The deal says the county will cover Curtice’s health benefits through the end of 2025 and says Curtice will retain his retirement benefits. It says Curtice will cooperate “to the fullest extent possible” with any litigation against the county related to his work as coroner. Curtice isn’t admitting wrongdoing.

Pickett, Curtice’s attorney, said he worked for months with the county prosecutor’s office to craft an agreement allowing Curtice, the county and community members “to put this behind them and move forward.”

In Yakima County, the coroner is an independently elected official responsible for investigating sudden, unexpected, violent, suspicious or unnatural deaths. First elected in 2018 as a Republican and re-elected in 2022, Curtice is a former emergency medical technician and paramedic.

He previously came under public scrutiny in 2023 after he was arrested outside his home by sheriff’s deputies while intoxicated and kicked one of them. The county prosecutor didn’t charge him, saying Curtice was experiencing a mental health crisis. Curtice said he was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder related to his childhood and first responder work.

Curtice came under renewed scrutiny last year after he fell ill in his office and told police that someone, such as the deputy coroner, had poisoned him by spiking his workout powder with drugs. After Curtice failed a polygraph test, he admitted to using drugs he found on corpses and spiking his own workout powder to back up his original story, police said.

In February, he pleaded not guilty in Yakima County District Court to official misconduct, false statements and evidence tampering. Those are gross misdemeanors that each carry a maximum sentence of a year in jail.

Curtice’s resignation will mean the end of a recall attempt launched this winter by precinct committee officers from the Yakima County Republican Party. They’ve been collecting petition signatures this year for a recall election, citing Curtice’s drug charges and work performance.

Curtice is also connected to questions about the case of Hien Trung Hua, who was arrested for kicking his mother during a mental health crisis in 2023 and who subsequently died in the county jail during a struggle with guards.

Hua’s mother filed a $50 million tort claim in October accusing the guards of killing her son and county officials – including Curtice – of covering it up.

She filed the claim after Seattle Times reporting detailed how Hua was pepper sprayed, wrestled, shackled, struck and held prone in the minutes before death. The Times contrasted Hua’s experience with that of Curtice, who was hospitalized rather than jailed during his 2023 crisis and got help.

In 2023, Curtice and forensic pathologist Jeffrey Reynolds reported the manner of Hua’s death as “natural.” But Reynolds changed his mind after an interview with The Times last year led him to watch videos of Hua’s death for the first time. He relabeled it “negligent homicide.” Rather than follow that recommendation, Curtice changed Hua’s death certificate to “accident.”

The state Office of Independent Investigations is currently reviewing the case to determine whether a new criminal investigation is warranted.