“I cannot in good conscience rely upon his findings in cases where the cause of death is more than a simple gunshot wound or stab wound” - District Attorney Frank Phillips, letter August 17, 1995

NEWBURGH – Dr. Louis Roh, the pathologist whose autopsy on 25-year old Nathaniel Cobbs found that he had died not from the severe beating, mutilple taserings and bites from a police dog but from drug-induced cardiac arrest, “makes findings the district attorney says are “incomplete, inadequate or erroneous,” according to a letter issued in 1995 by then- and current Orange County District Attorney Frank Phillips.

“I cannot in good conscience rely upon his findings in cases where the cause of death is more than a simple gunshot wound or stab wound,” Phillips’ letter continued. Phillips urged county coroners to replace Roh.

Roh’s report, according to Newburgh police, found that Cobbs likely died of a condition known as “excited delirium,” in which subjects who are intoxicated with PCP or cocaine suffer accelerated heart rate which leads to cardiac arrest and death.

Many medical professionals reject the concept of “excited delirium,” terming it a legal, rather than medical, concept, devised to avoid liability in police and/or medical malpractice wrongful death actions.

Meanwhile, civil rights attorney Michael Sussman, an advisor to the Cobbs family, has arranged for an independent autopsy to be conducted by the Rockalnd County medical examiner.

Cobbs’ family was denied access to his body for more than 24 hours after they were notified of his death. Officials at St. Lukes Cornwall Hospital had claimed that a lock was installed by Newburgh police on thehospital morgue, denying both the family and hospital workers access. Police denied the claim when challenged by Sussman.

An article about Phillips’ letter in the local daily Times Herald-Record in 1997 noted that “the work of a forensic pathologist is critical to determining the causes of suspicious deaths. Such determinations are the foundation of criminal prosecutions. Mishandled autopsies or misdiagnosed causes of death undermine the integrity of the criminal justice system. They could result in defendants being wrongly accused or in guilty parties being acquitted.”

The article also references testimony given in an Orange County trial by Dr. Mark Taff, who suggested that an improper autopsy could destroy evidence. “Anatomical landmarks have already been disturbed,” Taff told the jury. “(Other pathologists) had to depend on Dr. Roh’s eyes and ears.”