TACOMA — Prosecutors called Dr. Roger Mitchell to the witness stand in the trial of three Tacoma police officers charged in the in-custody death of an unarmed Black man in 2020.
An expert in forensic pathology, Mitchell told jurors that had he performed the autopsy of Manuel Ellis, he would have done things a little differently.
Mitchell, the former chief medical examiner for Washington, D.C., told jurors he would have performed additional dissections of the man’s body to look for deeper injuries. He also would have taken photos every step of the way, looking at his head for facial fractures due to his injuries and a full examination of the neck because police used a lateral vascular neck restraint on him.
It was Pierce County’s former medical examiner, Dr. Thomas Clark, who performed Ellis’ autopsy the day after he died the night of March 3, 2020, and he concluded his cause of death was hypoxia, a form of oxygen deprivation, due to physical restraint. He listed other contributing factors, methamphetamine intoxication and an enlarged heart.
Mitchell, who reviewed Clark’s findings and traveled to Tacoma in July last year to examine additional heart and lung tissue from Ellis, said his conclusion on the man’s cause of death went further than Clark’s, squarely laying the fault with police.
“I call his cause of death mechanical asphyxia due to violence, subdual and restraint by law enforcement officers,” Mitchell testified Thursday.
Ellis, 33, died of oxygen deprivation from physical restraint after encountering police the night of March 3, 2020, the Pierce County medical examiner ruled. Prosecutors with the Washington Attorney General’s Office have said officers attacked and restrained him without justification. Defense attorneys say the officers were simply responding after Ellis attacked their patrol car, and they have focused on the high amount of methamphetamine in his system as another explanation for his death.
Matthew Collins, 40, Christopher “Shane” Burbank, 38 and Timothy Rankine, 34, remain employed by the Tacoma Police Department on paid leave while they’re on trial. Collins and Burbank are charged with second-degree murder; all three officers are charged with first-degree manslaughter. They have all pleaded not guilty.
Answering questions from special assistant attorneys general Patty Eakes, Mitchell said the difference was mechanical asphyxia can have a greater effect on a person’s body than hypoxia.
He said hypoxia played a part, but the fact that Ellis could not move his chest to breathe because of individuals on top of him went not just to hypoxia but to how his heart functioned. Mitchell said acidosis also played a role in Ellis’ death, a buildup of acid that occurs when the body is not getting enough oxygen and the individual is in a struggle.
Mitchell is now the chair of the Department of Pathology at the Howard University College of Medicine, but as a medical examiner in Washington, D.C., he oversaw about 4,000 deaths a year from 2014 to 2021, and in his career he has personally performed about 2,000 autopsies, about seven of which he said were in-custody deaths.
Eakes also showed Mitchell photographs of Ellis’ body taken at the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office, asking him to describe what injuries he saw and what caused them. Mitchell noted numerous places where he said the man’s body was scraped on pavement, creating red marks on the left and right sides of his face, above his eyebrows and on his nose. He said some injuries above Ellis’ right eyebrow were consistent with being punched.
Reviewing a photo of Ellis’ mouth, Mitchell said some of his teeth were chipped, and he pointed to a small cut on the corner of his mouth.
“These injuries would have caused bleeding in his mouth,” Mitchell said.
The pathologist said there was evidence of blood inside of the spit hood placed on Ellis, and in his reviews, he found blood in Ellis’ airways, telling jurors blood and food particles are the two main things he looks for to see if someone breathed in something they shouldn’t have.
Eakes asked if there were any injuries to Ellis’ back, and Mitchell said that was difficult to determine. He noted some areas of discoloration, but he couldn’t say if they were injuries.
Prosecutors’ direct examination of Mitchell is expected to continue Monday.
Before Mitchell’s testimony, jurors and court goers were confronted Thursday morning with grim photographs of Ellis lying dead in the street.
While a death investigator with the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s office testified about what he saw when he arrived shortly after 3 a.m. at the corner of 96th Street and Ainsworth Avenue, prosecutors displayed on courtroom televisions at least 15 images of Ellis’ body.
Jacob Atzet pointed out Ellis’ bloodied cheek and knuckles, marks on his wrists and ankles from the restraints he was placed in and defects on his chest, where police shot him with a Taser. The first photo showed Ellis, who went by Manny, on his back with his feet near the curb. His black sweatshirt had been removed, and his exposed waist was partially covered by a white blanket.
Atzet told jurors he takes photos at the scene of death investigations to establish its location and the position of the dead person’s body. As he reviewed them, assistant attorney general Lori Nicolavo zoomed in on Ellis’ hands and legs. Atzet testified that he didn’t notice any substances on the man’s palms other than blood.
Then, Nicolavo showed jurors the clothing Ellis was wearing that night. Handling each article with white gloves, the attorney walked up and down the jury box showing the panel his purple and white shorts, the yellow sweatpants he wore over them, his black sweatshirt and his white Nikes.
Finally, Nicolavo held the spit hood that was put over Ellis’ head while restrained. Photographs from when it was booked into evidence appeared to show dark fluid inside of it.
The medical examiner who determined Ellis’ cause of death, Dr. Thomas Clark, noted the spit hood, which contains a mesh portion, as well as Ellis’ restraints and his positioning were significant factors in his death, according to his postmortem exam report. Clark has been identified as an expert witness for prosecutors.
Defense attorneys for the police officers then cross-examined the death investigator, asking Atzet about parts of Ellis’ body that did not appear injured, including his neck and skull. The lawyers also questioned him about medical records for Ellis he reviewed before going to the scene and what information he received from law enforcement.
Atzet testified Wednesday afternoon that law enforcement often provides death investigators with the only source of information about what happened to the deceased before they arrive. In this case, Atzet said dispatchers with South Sound 911 informed him of the death, and a Pierce County Sheriff’s Department detective told him a struggle occurred between police and the deceased person after the man started hitting their patrol car, and he had to be restrained.
Brett Purtzer, an attorney for Burbank, asked Atzet on Thursday what medical records showed about Ellis’ background. Atzet agreed there were medical diagnoses associated with his heart, and the records showed he had been diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, asthma, pneumonia, and he had a history of intravenous drug use and meth abuse.
Atzet said the records also documented a 2019 incident that described Ellis assaulting staff at a restaurant before staff fought him off, and he was noted to resist arrest when law enforcement confronted him.
Asked whether marks on Ellis’ wrists and legs from his handcuffs and hobble were consistent with a person fighting against the restraints, Atzet said he couldn’t make a determination about that. Purtzer also asked whether he recalled seeing a smudge on the patrol car’s passenger window.
“I don’t recall seeing anything on the window,” Atzet said.
Attorneys for the officers have maintained that Ellis attacked Burbank and Collins’ patrol car, prompting Burbank to swing his door into Ellis to stop him, kicking off the fatal encounter. Ellis was carrying raspberry-filled powdered donuts and a jug of water when he was walking home, and the defense has claimed Ellis got powder on the police cruiser when he punched its window.
Purtzer showed Atzet a photo of a white substance on the patrol car’s window, and the death investigator said he didn’t recognize it.
