Washington County coroner accuses DA of unethical conduct in baby’s homicide case

Timothy Warco claims Jason Walsh urged him to rule the 2022 case a homicide to aid his election prospects.

By PAULA REED WARD
TribLive

Within hours of the suspicious death of a Peters Township baby in Pittsburgh in 2022, the Washington County district attorney pressured his county’s coroner to assume jurisdiction of the case and ensure it was declared a homicide as part of a strategy to aid his election campaign, according to allegations contained in court papers filed Tuesday.

The accusations are included in an affidavit by longtime Washington County Coroner S. Timothy Warco and submitted to the state Supreme Court by the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation as part of their effort to rein in District Attorney Jason Walsh.

Among the new claims in the court filing are comments Warco says Walsh made to him the day the infant, Sawyer Clarke, died.

“[Y]ou know that I need this to be a homicide, I need it to win an election,’” Walsh said, according to Warco’s sworn statement.

Warco also admitted to sending a false death certificate to the state, saying in the affidavit that he was “compelled” to do so by Walsh.

The affidavit does not explain how Warco, an independently elected official, could have been compelled to do something by another independently elected official.

On Tuesday, Walsh called the new allegations “completely false and idiotic.”

“It’s absolutely false. He produces no evidence of anything,” Walsh told TribLive. “Mr. Warco admits to committing a crime. That’s on him. Why(’s) the (coroner) doing what he’s doing? I’d question his mental fitness.”

Warco did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Walsh, who was appointed as district attorney in 2021 after the death of former DA Eugene Vittone, ran on a tough-on-crime platform and has defended his record in seeking capital punishment against people accused of killing children.

But last week, the Atlantic Center filed a petition seeking extraordinary relief from the Supreme Court, accusing Walsh of improperly seeking capital punishment in cases where it is not merited, including in the death of Sawyer.

Sawyer’s father, Jordan Clarke, 39, of Peters Township is charged with homicide in the death of the 2-month-old boy and faces a possible death penalty.

On Tuesday, the Atlantic Center filed a motion to supplement the record with affidavits from both Warco, who has served as the elected coroner in Washington County since 1992, and his deputy.

“District Attorney Walsh abused the power of his office for his own personal gain,” Marc Bookman, executive director of the Atlantic Center, said Tuesday. “He has utilized the death penalty as a threat while trampling the due process rights of people accused but not convicted of crimes.”

Bookman said one problem with the death penalty is “that one self-aggrandizing politician can engage in shockingly unethical behavior, obstruct justice, ignore the rights of the citizens he was elected to serve, and do it all to win an election.”

Warco’s claim

According to the initial police report, Jordan Clarke was holding Sawyer and walking with him in the basement of his home on Pleasantview Drive on May 23, 2022, when he tripped on a grocery bag and fell.

The boy began to cry and became unresponsive.

After first responders arrived, Sawyer was taken to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh where he died the next day at 5:21 p.m.

Physicians there said his injuries were “gravely concerning for physical abuse — and inconsistent with someone falling on him.”

Less than an hour after Sawyer died, according to Warco’s affidavit, Washington County First Assistant District Attorney Leslie Ridge called Deputy Coroner Matthew Yancosek.

Warco claimed Ridge told the deputy coroner that Walsh “wanted Washington County to assume jurisdiction over the death of Sawyer Clarke because they needed it to be a homicide, and that it was their belief that Karl Williams, M.D., the Allegheny County Medical Examiner, would not rule it a homicide.”

According to an email attached to the affidavit, Ridge spoke with Williams that evening, and he agreed to relinquish Sawyer’s body to Washington County’s coroner for the autopsy.

Around that same time, the affidavit continued, Warco received a call from Walsh, ”who informed me that he wanted me to take jurisdiction of the death because ‘You know that I need this to be a homicide, I need it to win election.’” Warco tied the alleged request to Walsh’s bid to remain the county’s top prosecutor.

“Walsh had been proactively campaigning for his first election as district attorney, with his primary platform as harsh punishment for persons who kill infant and children,” the Warco affidavit said.

Warco called it a “constant theme” as the two were together at many political events throughout 2022 and 2023, and they spoke about it publicly and privately.

Second death certificate

When Warco told Walsh that day that Sawyer died in Allegheny County, and that he did not have jurisdiction, according to the affidavit, Walsh responded, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you a court order.’” By 7:20 p.m. on the night of Sawyer’s death, Washington County President Judge John DiSalle had issued an order authorizing their coroner’s office to obtain custody of Sawyer’s body from Allegheny County for an autopsy.

The affidavit asserts that Walsh misrepresented to DiSalle where Sawyer died to obtain the order.

In the order signed by DiSalle, it reads that the autopsy is necessary “to establish or determine injuries and cause of death, and to aid in establishing manner of death, and otherwise assist in the investigation and prosecution related to a [sic] infant fatality on May 24, 2022, in Peters Township, Washington County.”

Washington County deputies then retrieved Sawyer’s body from UPMC Children’s and transported him to the autopsy suite at Washington Hospital. It was there that Dr. Jennifer Hammers, a forensic pathologist contracted with Washington County to perform autopsies, conducted the post-mortem examination on May 25.

She ruled that Sawyer’s cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head, but she was unable to determine the manner of death.

Her findings were forwarded to the Allegheny County’s Medical Examiner’s Office. Although the office had relinquished the case, it still issued Sawyer’s death certificate because the baby died in Pittsburgh.

The certificate listed Sawyer’s cause of death as intracranial hemorrhage and the manner of death as “could not be determined.”

Warco wrote in his affidavit that Walsh approached him immediately after and “compelled” him to prepare and file a fraudulent death certificate even though Warco had no jurisdiction.

“Walsh directed me to file a certificate that listed blunt force trauma of the head and torso, with subdural hemorrhage, retinal hemorrhage and rib fractures, as the immediate cause of death,” Warco wrote. “I was also compelled by Walsh to list the manner of death as homicide, with shaken baby syndrome/abusive trauma as the mechanism.”

Warco said he filed the second death certificate on Jan. 4, 2023, but the state ultimately rejected it because Sawyer didn’t die in Washington County, according to the court filing.

“Both the manner of death and the mechanism of death listed in the fraudulent death certificate were wholly in contravention to the determination of the forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy for the Washington County Coroner’s office,” Warco wrote.

‘Outrageous’ allegations

Despite what the death certificate showed, Clarke was charged with criminal homicide on June 7, 2022, and less than three months later, on Aug. 30, 2022, Walsh filed notice of aggravating circumstances against Clarke so that his office could seek the death penalty.

The case is pending. Clarke’s defense attorney, William Difenderfer, said Tuesday the allegations in Warco’s affidavit, if true, are “outrageous.”

Difenderfer said the question of who had jurisdiction over the death is not the issue in the case.

“The issue is shopping a pathologist and pressuring the coroner so you can win an election,” he said.

Difenderfer has handled seven death penalty cases and has three currently pending — two in Washington County and one in Allegheny County.

Both Walsh and Warco are already the subject of a civil case in Washington County revolving around Sawyer’s death.

His parents filed a lawsuit in December alleging that Walsh was trying to leverage the Clarke case for political gain.

They accused Walsh, Warco and DiSalle with abuse of corpse, saying that Walsh orchestrated a plan that kept officials from releasing Sawyer’s body for burial for seven months after he died.