Questions Linger Over Death, Ethics Of Justice Scalia

Texas authorities bungled the death investigation last month of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and thereby caused needless fears of murder and scandal, according to a retired high-level police executive speaking at the National Press Club March 9.

Authorities should have performed an autopsy and other standard procedures to determine the cause of Scalia’s death Feb. 13 at a luxury ranch in West Texas said William O. Ritchie, Jr., a former deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) in the nation’s capital.

“Every death you investigate,” Ritchie recalled telling his police subordinates, “is a homicide until proven otherwise.”

Ritchie spoke during a press club panel discussion that also featured the two prize-winning Washington Post reporters who revealed that Scalia had been attending without normal security a gathering of an elite, all-male, secretive hunting society.

Reporters Sari Horwitz and Amy Brittain recounted how they unraveled step-by-step that Scalia attended for free over St. Valentine’s Day weekend a meeting of the International Order of St. Hubertus — and that only a few of the 36 guests are known at the five-star Cibolo Creek Ranch

Much of official Washington quickly moved on from the death — and its poorly sourced rumors of possible murder and other foul play, along with more substantive concerns about professional ethics — in order to focus on Scalia’s legacy and political jousting over his successor.

But the the Justice Integrity Project recruited three experts to discuss circumstances of the death before the press club’s McClendon Group, a speaker society for important topics sometimes downplayed because they create discomfort in elite circles.

Chief Ritchie, a former MPD homicide commander, made front page news last month in the Washington Post by criticizing Texas authorities who deferred to Scalia’s family and billionaire ranch owner John B. Poindexter by announcing that Scalia, 79, died of “natural causes” without examining the body or death scene. Ritchie said the circumstances were “fishy.” The U.S. Marshals Service said Scalia had declined a security detail at the Cibolo Creek Ranch owned by Poindexter, shown at right in a photo from his company..