Cop Killer's Death Prompts Inquiries

NEW ORLEANS - Adolph Archie died, messily, after 13 hours in the custody of police who arrested him for the fatal shooting of a police officer.

He had a cracked skull, a crushed larynx, a shattered face and too many bloody bruises to count, according to the autopsy his family commissioned.

``There is no question: This man was beaten to death,'' the family's attorney, Mary Howell, said last week at a news conference. ``If I may be more specific, he was stomped to death.''

The allegations have led to investigations by police, Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick and U.S. Attorney John Volz.

Civil-rights leaders, meanwhile, accuse Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard of releasing an incomplete autopsy report and of trying to protect the police. They demand that he resign.

No one disputes that Archie killed police officer Earl Hauck.

``He should have been arrested, tried and executed for killing that policeman,'' said the Rev. Marie Galatas, head of the city's Grass Roots Organization for Women. ``But he should have gone through a court system.''

GROW and Southern Christian Leadership Conference officials say police officers have told them confidentially that four officers were involved in beating Archie.

Archie, 40, had nine criminal convictions behind him when he ran away from a parish prison work detail on March 8.

On March 22, police said, a security guard surprised him while

he was breaking into a parked car at the Louisiana Superdome. Hauck was fatally shot after cornering Archie.

Archie, shot in the forearm and slightly injured during the chase, was captured and taken to Charity Hospital, but wasn't admitted.

Hauck, too, was taken to Charity, where he was pronounced dead.

Police Chief Warren Woodfork said police decided to take Archie from Charity to the 1st District police station where Hauck had worked because Hauck's fellow officers were at Charity and Archie might be in danger there.

At the police station, police said Archie tried to grab a gun and was knocked backward, hitting his head on the floor. There were no reports that might account for the numerous other injuries Archie suffered.

The next morning, Archie was lying on a table in Charity, awaiting a CAT scan, when he became agitated, ripped a tracheal tube from his throat and died before the tube could be reinserted, according to hospital reports.

The direct cause of death, said Minyard, was the removal of the tracheal tube.

Dr. Kris Sperry, a Fulton County, Ga., forensic pathologist hired by the family attorney to do an independent autopsy, said Archie needed the tracheal tube because of severe injuries inflicted in a fight with one or more people. Sperry concludes that ``the manner of death is homicide.''

Minyard and police have refused to comment on Sperry's report.