Dr. Joye M. Carter - The Woman who Performed Cliff Baxter's Autopsy

At 2:23 in the morning of January 25, 2002, J. Clifford Baxter was found dead in his automobile by the Sugar Land, Texas police. The gun in his hand and the note by his side led the officers to suspect suicide. His body was taken to a Sugar Land funeral home without an examination. Harris County, Texas justice of the peace James Richard ruled Baxter's death a suicide without ordering an autopsy, in spite of the fact that Mr. Baxter was a central figure in the Enron investigation. After receiving pressure from lawmakers and the press, the judge ordered an autopsy. Before 7:00 am on January 26, the press announced that Cliff Baxter's death was officially ruled a suicide.

Meet Dr. Joye M. Carter, author of the book "My Strength Comes from Within". She is also the Houston County Medical Examiner that performed the autopsy so quickly after Cliff Baxter's death.
Dr. Carter has been in the news many times before. She was fined and almost lost her license in 2001 for allowing an unlicensed pathologist to perform autopsies. In 1998 her office was accused of tampering with evidence in the murder of a 12-year old girl. That same year she admitted that bodies were sometimes stacked on top of each other at her morgue. She's been sued (and lost) twice by whistleblowers who were fired for trying to expose corruption in the Harris County Medical Examiner's office.

Before she was Houston's medical examiner she used to be the medical examiner in Washington DC, and by the time she left to take the job in Houston, the DC morgue was so filthy and backlogged with corpses and lab tests that it was hampering police investigations. Lately she's been in the news for other reasons.

Dr. Carter examined the Yates children after their tragic drowning. From the Houston Chronicle:

"Dr. Joye M. Carter, the Harris County chief medical examiner, said that while the children's bodies might be released to the family by Friday, she cautioned that autopsy results won't be known for about 10 days.
'It appears to have been drowning of all five of the young victims,' she said."

She continued: " ' We're going to continue to do a thorough work-up. We've X-rayed all the bodies as is customary with children," she said. "We will still be awaiting the results of the toxicology tests to make sure that there was

The autopsy results weren't released until July 13, 2002, twenty-three days after the drowning.

	It took Dr. Carter 23 days to rule that the Yates children had been drowned, but she was able to rule Cliff Baxter's death a suicide within 24 hours. In fact, she ruled Cliff Baxter's death a suicide before she even submitted the toxicology tests. The toxicology tests were not submitted until January 26, 2002.
	Rat Shot ~ Glass Shards ~ Sleeping Pills Read the entire Cliff Baxter autopsy report at WhatReallyHappened.com.

In May, unclaimed bodies at the D.C. morgue were piled like cordwood because the crematorium had broken down.

But the backlog of bodies was only part of the story. The morgue was filthy, the ventilation was inadequate, and city officials acknowledged that more than 200 autopsies and 400 toxicology analyses had not been completed because of money, equipment and personnel problems. The morgue's problems, in turn, were hampering police investigations.

Joye M. Carter, the city's chief medical examiner, resigned to take a job in Houston, and city officials had difficulty replacing her and filling other pathologist positions.