One of the few death investigations with a similar level of complexity and public scrutiny was the one conducted after the death of model Anna Nicole Smith, who died of a drug overdose in 2007.
Dr. Stephen J. Cina, deputy chief medical examiner in Broward County, Florida, where Smith died, said that it took the medical examiner's office six weeks to investigate the cause of her death.
In addition, investigators from the Drug Enforcement Administration, three state agencies and the L.A. County district attorney's office pored over evidence related to her death for two years before prosecutors charged her boyfriend and two physicians with conspiracy to illegally furnish the late model with sleeping pills, painkillers and other drugs.
The three have pleaded not guilty, and a preliminary hearing is set for later this summer.
Adam Braun, a former federal prosecutor who is representing one of the defendants, Khristine Eroshevich, said such investigations take much longer than other probes because of the medical expertise required to review cases.
"The patient might be seeing three or four different doctors who are prescribing medications that the other doctors are unaware of," he said. "Just because there is a deadly cocktail doesn't mean the actions of one physician were inappropriate."
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richard.winton@latimes.com
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Times staff writers Andrew Blankstein, Joel Rubin, Kimi Yoshino, Jeff Gottlieb and Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.
