LOS ANGELES TIMES
MAY 19, 1992
Page 1A
Clintons Ties to Controversial Medical Examiner Questioned
By JAMES RISEN and EDWIN CHEN
TIMES STAFF WRITERS
LITTLE ROCK, Ark.-Gov. Bill Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, refused for several years to dismiss a state medical examiner whose controversial decrees included a ruling that helped Clinton's mother, a nurse-anesthetist, avoid scrutiny in the death of a patient, according to Arkansas officials and state records.
The medical examiner, Dr. Fahmy Malak, "was sort of protected by the governor and the [state crime laboratory] board," state Rep. Bob Fairchild, a Democrat from Fayetteville, told The Times. Fairchild is the author of legislation to reform the laboratory board, which has authority over the state medical examiner. Clinton appoints the board members.
Clinton, Malak and Clinton's mother, Virginia Dwire Kelley, 68, deny any connection between Malak's longevity in his job and his ruling involving Kelley. Malak, through his attorney, says he did not know that one of his findings had benefited Kelley until years after he issued the ruling.
The governor and his board declined to fire Malak despite more than four years of public criticism of Malak's work. The record shows that Malak testified erroneously in criminal cases, that his rulings were reversed by juries and that outside pathologists challenged his findings. In one instance, he misread a medical chart and wrongly accused a county coroner of killing someone. In another, he based court testimony on tissue samples that DNA tests later indicated had been mixed up with other tissue samples.
Three weeks before Clinton announced his presidential candidacy last Oct. 3, he pushed Malak, whom he had appointed during his first gubernatorial term, to resign. But then the Clinton Administration found Malak another well-paying job in state government. It prompted renewed questions about a conflict of interest growing out of Malak's ruling in 1981 that involved Clinton's mother.
That ruling, which came between terms when Clinton was out of office, helped Clinton's mother avoid legal scrutiny in one patient's death--while she was defending herself in a medical malpractice lawsuit stemming from the death of another patient.
The conflict-of-interest questions have been raised by a county coroner, by Malak critics and by a writer for the Arkansas Gazette. The writer, Max Brantley, a columnist for the Gazette at the time and now editor of the weekly Arkansas Times. said about Malak's resignation and his new position: "We may never know why Malak enjoyed such strong support." He added that "critics will note, accurately, that Malak has made an autopsy finding helpful to Clinton's mother."
Clinton, in a written statement to The Times, responded:
"There has never been any connection between my mother's professional experiences and actions I have taken or not taken as governor of Arkansas, and I resent any implications otherwise....In fact it was several years after the incident that I became aware, through the media. that the ruling made by Dr. Malak in this case was controversial. I do not have the professional knowledge necessary to judge the competency of a forensic pathologist. For several years prior to Dr. Malak's resignation as medical examiner, I requested that reviews of his performance be conducted and that appropriate action be taken by the Crime Lab Board and/or the Medical Examiner Commission. It was their decision to retain him."
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