Not to sound the conspiracy alarm–Alex Jones already did that last night..
The man known for his elegant legal opinions and profound intellect was found dead in his room at a hunting resort, either by a housekeeper or the ranch owner, according to conflicting accounts.
It then took hours for authorities in remote West Texas to find a justice of the peace, officials said Sunday. When they did, she pronounced Scalia dead of natural causes without seeing the body and decided not to order an autopsy. A second justice of the peace, who was called but couldn’t get to Scalia’s body in time, said she would have ordered an autopsy.
More:
“If it had been me . . . I would want to know,” Juanita Bishop, a justice of the peace in Presidio, Tex., told The Washington Post in an interview Sunday about the chaotic hours after Scalia’s death at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a luxury compound less than an hour from the Mexican border and about 40 miles south of Marfa.
The U.S. Marshals Service has not issued a statement about the events surrounding Scalia’s death Saturday. And as official Washington tried to process what the justice’s death means for politics and the law, some details of his final hours remained opaque.
No autopsy? Quick embalming?
As late as Sunday afternoon, there were conflicting reports about whether an autopsy would be performed, though officials later said Scalia’s body was being embalmed and there would be no autopsy. One report, by WFAA-TV in Dallas, said the death certificate would show the cause of the death was a heart attack.
More information on his death:
Scalia did not appear for breakfast with others from the party, officials said; people at first thought he might be sleeping in, but they eventually grew concerned. A housekeeper found the body, according to Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara; other witnesses said the housekeeper opened Scalia’s door at the request of the ranch owner.
After emergency personnel and officials from the U.S. Marshals Service were called to the scene, two local judges who also serve as justices of the peace were called, Guevara said in an interview Sunday. Both were out of town, she said — not unusual in a remote region where municipalities are spread far apart.
Guevara also was out of town, but she said she declared Scalia dead based on information provided by officials at the scene, citing Texas laws that allow a justice of the peace to declare someone dead without seeing the body.
And finally this conclusion after all of the intrigue in high places.
“An autopsy was declined at about 3:30 a.m.,” Lujan said. “The justice of the peace said there was no indication of foul play and that he died in his sleep from natural causes.”
