Months after dismissing Delaware’s embattled Chief Medical Examiner, state officials have named Dr. Gary Collins to the post.
Collins has served as Philadelphia’s Deputy Chief Medical Examiner for the past two years and resides in Newark. Overall, Collins’s tenure at the office stretches for more than seven years.
Collins has performed thousands of autopsies – including Karnamaya Mongar, the woman who died in Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic. Originally ruled an accidental death, he revised his decision, marking it a homicide months later.
During the trial, reports say Collins left the witness chair and ripped down a defense attorney’s exhibit on an easel before the judge stopped him.
In a statement, Gov. Jack Markell (D-DE) says he “brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to our State at a time when it is needed most.”
Phone calls to Collins’s office and home were not returned. “I look forward to working with the Division and enhancing the practice of forensic science in Delaware,” Collins said in a statement.
State lawmakers shifted the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner from the Department of Health and Social Services to the Department of Safety and Homeland Security in July.
That severed former office head Richard Callery’s state contract without a possibly lengthy legal battle.
Callery was ousted following revelations that he had been running a private business from his office and serving as an expert-for-hire outside the state.