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Judge dismisses latest suit over Amanda Wienckowski's death, citing statute of limitations

Buffalo News - 1/22/2022

Jan. 22—A state judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed over the summer seeking to change the official determination on how Amanda Wienckowski died.

State Supreme Court Justice Donna M. Siwek agreed with Erie County's lawyers who said the lawsuit — filed in August by Wienckowski's mother, who believes her daughter's 2009 death was a homicide — exceeded the statute of limitations.

The legal challenge needed to be filed within four months of Feb. 10, 2009, Siwek ruled. That was when the Erie County Medical Examiner's Office amended Wienckowski's death certificate, concluding she died of "acute opiate intoxication."

Any changes to that determination, or any revisiting of the matter by the Medical Examiner's Office, "can only happen on their own initiative," Siwek said in a written ruling. "At this late date, there is absolutely no basis for a court to order them to do so."

Wienckowski's frozen, naked body was found Jan. 9, 2009, upside down in a garbage tote on Spring Street.

The lawsuit, filed by Wienckowski's mother, Leslie Brill Meserole, sought one of three outcomes — to have the judge order Wienckowski's death ruled a homicide; to have the cause deemed "undetermined"; or to have the Medical Examiner's Office reopen the death investigation and make a new determination.

Since the medical examiner's determination in 2009, there have been six reviews of the circumstances of Wienckowski's death that have either resulted in different conclusions or called into question the medical examiner's findings.

The most recent was a February 2021 report by a Georgia toxicologist who reviewed the case at the family's request. His report, which was filed with the lawsuit, concluded that the determination Wienckowski died of an accidental drug overdose was "highly unlikely and not supported by the body of scientific evidence."

Buffalo police and three Erie County district attorneys, including current District Attorney John Flynn, have reviewed the evidence in the case, but none filed charges.

Meserole has previously filed a number of suits in relation to the investigation of her daughter's death.

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