Inside the cloistered chambers of the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia’s days were highly regulated and predictable. He met with clerks, wrote opinions and appeared for arguments in the august courtroom on a schedule set months in advance.
Yet as details of his sudden death trickled in Sunday, it appeared that the hours afterward were anything but orderly. The man known for his elegant legal opinions and profound intellect was found dead in his room at a hunting resort by a ranch owner.
It then took hours for authorities in remote West Texas to find a justice of the peace, officials said Sunday. When they did, she pronounced Scalia dead of natural causes without seeing the body and decided not to order an autopsy. A second justice of the peace, who was called but couldn’t get to Scalia’s body in time, said she would have ordered an autopsy.
“If it had been me . . . I would want to know,” Juanita Bishop, a justice of the peace in Presidio, Texas, told The Washington Post in an interview Sunday about the chaotic hours after Scalia’s death at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a luxury compound less than an hour from the Mexican border and about 40 miles south of Marfa.
The U.S. Marshals Service has not issued a statement about the events surrounding the death on Saturday of Scalia, who had recently returned from a trip to the Far East, where his last public event was a book signing in Hong Kong. And as official Washington tried to process what the justice’s death means for politics and the law, some details of his final hours remained opaque.
As late as Sunday afternoon, there were conflicting reports about whether an autopsy would be performed, though officials later said Scalia’s body was being embalmed and there would be no autopsy. One report, by WFAA-TV in Dallas, said the death certificate would show the cause of the death was a heart attack.
One thing was clear: Scalia had died in his element, doing what he loved at the ranch that has played host to movie stars and European royalty and is famous for bird hunts and bigger game, such as bison and mountain lions.
“Other than being with his family or in church, there’s no place he’d rather be than on a hunt,” said Houston lawyer Mark Lanier, who accompanied Scalia on hunting trips seeking wild boar, deer and even alligators. Lanier said he first learned of Scalia’s love for hunting through former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. “He’ll do anything if you take him hunting,” Lanier recalled O’Connor saying.
John Poindexter, who owns the ranch, said Sunday that Scalia and a friend arrived Friday by chartered aircraft after first traveling to Houston, accompanied by U.S. marshals. About 35 people were in his party; Poindexter declined to name the other guests.
Scalia went out with the group that day to hunt blue quail, but “he did not exert himself. He got out of the hunting vehicle, and walked around some,” Poindexter said.
Although law enforcement officials said Scalia left a private party that night, attended by about 40 people, to go to bed early, Poindexter said that didn’t seem unusual. All of the guests were tired from traveling to the remote ranch and the day’s other activities, with everyone going to bed by 10 p.m., he said.
According to law enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized spokespeople, Scalia did not show up for breakfast the next morning. People at first thought he might be sleeping in, but they eventually grew concerned, the officials said.
Poindexter and one other person knocked on his room door, didn’t get an answer, and went inside.
“Everything was in perfect order. He was in his pajamas, peacefully, in bed,” Poindexter said, adding that Scalia had been his usual affable self at the ranch and that “his behavior was entirely natural and normal.”
After emergency personnel and officials from the U.S. Marshals Service were called to the scene, two local judges who also serve as justices of the peace were called, Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara said in an interview Sunday. Both were out of town, she said – not unusual in a remote region where municipalities are spread far apart.
Guevara also was out of town, but she said she declared Scalia dead based on information provided by officials at the scene, citing Texas laws that allow a justice of the peace to declare someone dead without seeing the body.
Guevara declined to comment further to The Post, but told WFAA that Scalia’s death certificate would list myocardial infarction – a heart attack – as the official cause of death.
Chris Lujan, manager of the Sunset Funeral Home in El Paso, where Scalia was taken, did not question the television report but said he had not seen paperwork confirming the cause of death. Other officials declined to comment.
Guevara told the station that she planned to drive to the ranch but changed her mind when a U.S. marshal told her by phone: “It’s not necessary for you to come, judge. If you’re asking for an autopsy, that’s what we need to clarify.”
Guevara said she asked the marshals whether there were “any signs of foul play. And they said, ‘Absolutely not,’ ” she told the station. After talking with Scalia’s personal physician, she said, she pronounced him dead and declined to order an inquest.
Scalia’s body was taken to the Sunset Funeral Home by a procession of about 20 law enforcement officers. It arrived there about 2:30 a.m. Sunday, according to Lujan. The funeral home is about 3 1/2 hours from the ranch where Scalia died.
Lujan said that Scalia’s family did not request an autopsy and that the body is being prepared for the funeral and will be transported back to Washington on Monday. It is under guard by six law enforcement officials, including U.S. marshals and Texas state troopers, Lujan said.
“An autopsy was declined at about 3:30 a.m.,” Lujan said. “The justice of the peace said there was no indication of foul play and that he died in his sleep from natural causes.”
Funeral arrangements for Scalia were unclear Sunday.
