Posted on 02/15/2016 9:36:27 AM PST by FR_addict
... I was reporting from a candidate forum in neighboring Brewster County. Officials from all three counties were in attendance. David Beebe, the justice of the peace for Precinct 1 in Presidio County, was there, too. Shortly after 1 p.m., he received a request to handle an inquest for "a dead body" back in his county.
The call came from Juanita Bishop, the justice of the peace for Precinct 2, who is nominally closer, but she was at a work-related event more than 120 miles away in Fort Stockton.
Beebe responded he was also far away, too, busy at the political forum. The deceased wasn't identified. Bishop said she would find an alternate. In this border county, sometimes the dead body is an undocumented migrant. Identification can take weeks; death can wait.
Bishop contacted the third choice, Presidio County Judge Cinderella Guevara, who was also unable to make the drive to Cibolo Creek Ranch. Connecting with the county sheriff there, she officially handled the inquest - over the phone - pronouncing Justice Scalia dead just before 2 p.m. The Texas Code of Criminal Procedures allows justices of the peace to pronounce death via phone when deemed reasonable.
It wasn't until after 3 p.m. that the news started to make its way to the local officials at the candidates forum. Phones lit up. People stopped paying attention to the debate on the stage. I was sitting near Judge Beebe, and we rushed out of the school auditorium together. We drove straight to the only funeral home in the area, in Alpine - where there was no answer at the door. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at marfapublicradio.org ...
I have never in all my yeas fallen asleep with a pillow over my face. There is the small matter of breathing.
It really doesn’t matter if it was a supreme or not. The Justice of the Peace basically rules, “they’re dead” legally. They don’t have to go stare at the body. They don’t investigate it and break out their junior CSI kit.
No sense in someone driving a few hundred miles to do that. There are paramedics and a deputy there at the scene. The drama will never end from those who think this is a suburb of DC, but this is normal.
I guess for a supreme the could have waited for 3 or 4 hours for a JP to arrive and say “he’s really REALLY dead”.
It doesn’t really matter who the dead body was, their job is the same. And in these rural counties things work different, it ain’t CSI in the hinterlands, it’s a lot more Old West style, more Roy Bean. JPs get there when they get there and the process is very geared towards them not having to get there. It’s smoother now with cellphones, 100 years ago in these places it could have taken weeks for the officials to get there on their normal rotation and sign off on the paperwork.
Well maybe you are comfortable with someone declaring an important Supreme Court Justice dead over the phone, but I’m not. There should have been an autopsy. One of the Justices said that if she had been told the situation, she would have ordered an autopsy.
Yep, they have both computers and cell phones.
79 year olds never say they don’t feel so good, go to bed early, and die in their sleep. This is going to turn into the next nutty truther theory.
A band of Al Qeida frogmen, under orders from Obama, popped up out of the swimming pool and fired a silenced heart attack gun.
Kinda sad that a 79 year old man can’t have a heart attack in a peaceful setting. His memory will have to a national enquirer fun game and turned into a cartoon.
Worst of all, the nutty variant of conspiracy world makes people numb to the actual nefarious things our government does. They wave their hand and dismiss it.
“It doesn’t really matter who the dead body was, their job is the same.”
No, it’s not the same.
Scalia may not have been young, but he held a high important office. There are people of means who wanted Scalia out of the way.
I will sometimes put a pillow atop my head and pull the edge down over my eyes if I’m trying to nap and the room is too bright. But never any lower than that.
“One of the Justices said that if she had been told the situation, she would have ordered an autopsy.”
Really? You are saying that -in Texas- you found some politician who disagreed with something another politician did? Astounding, that NEVER happens.
“Scalia may not have been young, but he held a high important office. There are people of means who wanted Scalia out of the way.”
Hard to believe there will not be an autopsy.
Scalia obviously enjoyed the “good life”.... the best foods, wine, a good smoke. He was way overweight too. If he’d have taken better care of himself we might have gotten another 10 years from him.
Damn shame.
Loony tunes. First, a death is a death. He wasn’t more important.
Second of all, they wanted him out of the way you say. For what? If they were THAT worried about stacking the court, you think nobody would have approached Ginsberg and asked her to retire?
So your brilliant plan is that an assassination team moves into a county of 5 people where headlights are seen 15 miles away, kills Scalia at a hunting ranch. And all this is done so Obama gets a chance to TRY to get an election year appointment through?
Sounds like a stupid plan. And sounds like you might not have spent much time in west Texas on a ranch as a guest. That’s about the last place you’d want to try to assassinate someone.
Well maybe he decided he had enough and committed suicide by suffocating himself. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Nothing to see here, move it along.
I’m surprised his family didn’t request an autopsy.
Without an autopsy how does anyone know it was a heart attack
Presidio County does not have a coroner or medical examiner link on its website. Presumably they have some sort of arrangement with a neighboring county. I’ve never lived anywhere so rural that there was no coroner, so it seems bizarre to me.
Judge Guevara said she was shopping in the neighboring town of Alpine on Saturday afternoon when Presidio County Sheriff Danny Dominguez called her on her mobile phone after lunch. Guevara officially pronounced him dead at 1:52 p.m. on Saturday. http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/texas-news/scalia-to-have-autopsy-in-texas-according-to-state-law/42898331
The body was found in the morning after Scalia did not show up for breakfast. http://www.ksat.com/news/supreme-court-justice-antonin-scalia-79-dies
The body arrived at El Paso at 2:30 AM. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/body-of-supreme-court-justice-antonin-scalia-arrives-in-el-paso-awaits-flight-to-dc/ar-BBpufxo after a three hour trip http://woodtv.com/2016/02/14/scalias-body-at-funeral-home-after-3-hour-procession/ Which indicates a departure time of 11:30 PM
So let’s say breakfast was at 8:30 AM. By perhaps 10:00 people went to find him (I have not seen any report listing the time of discovery).
That’s nearly 12 hours between discovery and transport.
During those 12 hours the County Judge did not see the body and, without an autopsy to determine the cause of death of the found body, literally phones it in that the cause of death is “natural”.
It’s aprx 64 miles from Alpine to Cibolo Creek Ranch, all but the last aprx 4.5 miles of which is via US highway. Even allowing for 2 hours to travel from Alpine to Cibolo Creek Ranch the judge could not find time in 10 hours to actually view the body? Really? A Justice of the Supreme Court is found dead and she can’t be bothered?
Just read interesting input on Citizen Wells that Blago’s case goes before the Supremes this month, and TPTB feared Scalia’s ruling on that case. But probably a lot of cases coming up Scalia could have made a lot of impact on which sadly will not happen now.
“Scalia obviously enjoyed the “good lifeâ€.... the best foods, wine, a good smoke. He was way overweight too.”
Yep, and this health nut who lived his life about ten feet above sea level decides to go hunting, in the desert, at 4,600 above sea level. Arrived the day before he died. Oxygen is your friend.
People joke about it, but its a hard land. Shameless of me, but it’s no country for old men.
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