Networked Knowledge - Media Report

[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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On 19 July 2006, Matt Williams of the Adelaide Advertiser reported on further concerns which have arisen in relation to the work of the Adelaide forensic pathologist Allan Cala. Other articles on the Dr Cala homepage refer to the murder case which is under investigation in NSW. Matt Williams was referring to the Sydney inquiry at the Glebe mortuary, some five years ago, which said that Dr Cala had ordered a morgue worker to hit a dead body’s head with a hammer. The 2001 inquiry into practices at the New South Wales Institute of Forensic Medicine found that Dr Cala, who now is based in South Australia, breached both the Anatomy Act and the Coroners Act.

The report by Matt Williams went on to say that:
no criminal charges were laid against Dr Cala or the mortuary assistant, Simon McLeod. As part of a 1996 coronial investigation into whether a victim had been killed because of a hammer blow to the head, Dr Cala instructed the assistant to strike the head of a “donated” body with a hammer.

Apparently, “The suspected kind of hammer, a ball-pein, was used by Mr McLeod, under Dr Cala’s supervision, and at Dr Cala’s direction,” the report says. “The trauma administered by the hammer blows was studied and photographed by Dr Cala for later forensic use.

“This experimental procedure was not authorised by the Anatomy Act.

“It was not a coronial post mortem examination or special test under Section 48 of the Coroners Act because there was not any coroner’s direction for it to be done.

“It was thus unlawful.”

Matt Williams referred to the fact that these revelations have come whilst Dr Cala is being investigated by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission for finding a couple murdered in 2000 had actually died in a road accident.

Williams referred to the report by Barrister Bret Walker, [linked to from the Dr Cala Homepage] who stated that from the forensic medicine inquiry on the hammer incident, “it was clear that Dr Cala and Mr McLeod thought what they were doing was permissible”. “Given the lack of definition of the critical statutory phrase ‘for anatomical examination’ ... the conduct of Dr Cala and Mr McLeod in striking this cadaver with a ball-pein hammer should not attract moral criticism,” the report states.

“Their mistake illustrates a long-standing deficiency within the medical profession generally and among pathologists in particular of adequate legal instruction concerning the use of dead bodies and human remains.”

Source: The Advertiser, 19 July 2006 Matt Williams, "Dead body hit with hammer in morgue"

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