Travis County hires medical examiner

Travis County Commissioners voted Tuesday to hire J. Keith Pinckard, M.D., Ph.D., as the county’s chief medical examiner. Commissioners chose Pinckard after a nationwide search, following the Aug. 18 resignation of former Medical Examiner David Dolinak, M.D. Pinckard, who will make $270,000 a year, will report directly to the Commissioners Court. He will inherit a demoralized staff and an overloaded and outdated forensics facility that was declared to be beyond capacity almost a decade ago. Commissioners recently approved going forward with plans to build a new $27 million, 51,000-square-foot Medical Examiner building, but have not announced a date for its completion. Pinckard, 46, is currently the deputy chief of the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator, a statewide medical examiner system. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis in 1998. He will begin his job at Travis County March 1.