Suit cites Adachi autopsy report
A former highranking official at the San Francisco Medical Examiner’s Office is suing the city for wrongful termination, alleging he was fired after he refused to alter Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s autopsy report on orders from City Administrator Naomi Kelly.
Christopher Wirowek, a former operators director for the Medical Examiner’s Office, filed a lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court late last month, claiming he faced retaliation and was eventually terminated after spurning Kelly’s demand to alter the autopsy report shortly before it was released to the public in March 2019.
Wirowek also alleges his office and work computer were ransacked by a superior in the office while he was on paternity leave in early 2019. Last August, after Wirowek announced his intent to return to work, he claims he was put on administrative leave but “knew his termination was a foregone conclusion,” according to the lawsuit.
Wirowek claims Kelly demanded to see a copy of the autopsy report on March 22, 2019, the day it was set for public release. He alleges he refused Kelly’s attempt to edit the document, told her doing so would be illegal and released it to the public as the Medical Examiner’s Office office doctors intended.
Wirowek’s complaint makes no mention of the changes Kelly demanded, nor does it specify why she wanted them made. The complaint says only that after reviewing a copy of Adachi’s autopsy report, Kelly voiced her disagreement with its conclusions and demanded Wirowek “add, change and edit” the report “with her version of the findings.”
A spokesman for the City Administrator’s Office called the lawsuit’s allegations “a complete fiction,” and a spokesman for the city attorney’s office said lawyers were reviewing the lawsuit and intended to “mount a vigorous defense in court.”
According to television station KPIX, which first reported the lawsuit late Wednesday, Wirowek’s attorney said he’s “anxious to elaborate publicly when the time is right.” Neither Wirowek nor his lawyers responded to requests for comment Thursday.
Adachi died from the strain that a mixture of cocaine and alcohol put on his already weakened heart, the medical examiner found. He was found unconscious by paramedics in the early evening of Feb. 22, 2019. The report dispassionately documented some of the lurid details of his final hours, including photos of an unkempt bed, marijuana edibles and liquor bottles in a Telegraph Hill apartment where he was with a woman who was not his wife.
The initial copy of Adachi’s autopsy report that Wirowek released to the public contained the late public defender’s Social Security number and home address, a violation of state public records laws.
A day later, Wirowek sent out another copy of the report with that information redacted, asking anyone who received the initial, unredacted version to “destroy/delete copies of the previous report.”
Adachi had raised serious concerns about Wirowek’s competency to Kelly just two months before his death.
The public defender wrote to Kelly in December 2018 saying that Wirowek had engaged in “dishonest conduct” after he allegedly misrepresented the Medical Examiner’s Office accreditation status to the district attorney’s office. According to Adachi, Wirowek told the district attorney the Medical Examiner’s Office had been granted a provisional accreditation by a national accrediting agency, when in fact the accreditation had lapsed.
“There should be a full investigation and if Mr. Wirowek is determined to have lied, he should be terminated — he should not be permitted to remain in a position of responsibility in the face irrefutable proof that he lied repeatedly about material issues involving the (Medical Examiner’s Office),” Adachi wrote.
After Adachi’s death, the public defender’s office slammed the medical examiner’s findings, and in an extraordinary move, released a press statement highlighting the findings of an independent review of the autopsy report by independent doctors.
The independent analysis found there was not enough cocaine and alcohol detected in Adachi’s system to conclude the drugs caused his death, and that his preexisting heart condition could well have precipitated his death.
The public defender’s office also raised the specter of Wirowek’s conflict of interest in Adachi’s case, given the fact that Wirowek “personally appeared at the scene of Mr. Adachi’s death and became highly involved in the investigation.”
Though the office hedged, adding “it is unclear whether any of these circumstances may have influenced the (Medical Examiner’s Office) procedures or conclusions.”