Murder charge dismissed against man accused of fatal beating in Tacoma apartment
The murder charge against a 40-year-old man accused of fatally beating someone in a Tacoma apartment earlier this year has been dismissed due to a change of opinion by the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office, according to court records.
Prosecutors charged Benjamin Carroll Carter with second-degree murder for the death of 40-year-old William Harris following a March 12 fight.
“It is undisputed the defendant beat the victim immediately prior to the victim’s death,” deputy prosecutor Kawyne Lund wrote Sept. 19 in the motion to dismiss that charge. “It is also undisputed that despite the accounts of the eye witnesses that the defendant kicked and hit the victim after he was down, all medical records and autopsy reports indicate the victim did not sustain any fractures or other substantial bodily harm.”
Charging papers said Carter beat Harris after Harris accused him of looking at child pornography, which Harris denied, at Carter’s apartment near the 300 block of South Ninth Street.
Carter kicked Harris’ head and chest, choked him with Harris’ jacket and lunged at a witness in the apartment hallway, the charging papers alleged.
Harris was pronounced dead after being taken to the hospital.
According to the motion to dismiss, the medical examiner noticed the victim’s heart was “enlarged and damaged,” and that his toxicology results showed “high levels of methamphetamine.”
The autopsy report listed the cause of death as “cardiac dysrhythmia due to assault” and the manner of death as homicide.
“There is a strong temporal relationship between the assault and the death, and no reason to think that death would have occurred at that time but for the physical assault,” the medical examiner reported contemporaneously to Harris’ death.
In preparation for trial, the state spoke with Pierce County Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Clark, who recently announced he is retiring.
“He now reports: ‘Death is most likely due to cardiac dysrhythmia due to the assault in the setting of methamphetamine intoxication ... However, there was enough methamphetamine to account for the death even without the assault,’” Lund wrote. “Because the ME opines that the methamphetamine level alone may account for the death, the state cannot prove causation or other necessary elements beyond a reasonable doubt.”
