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Bobbi Kristina Brown

Bobbi Kristina Brown autopsy unsealed, months after her death

Maria Puente
USA TODAY
Bobbi Kristina Brown in August 2012.

Thirteen months after Bobbi Kristina Brown was found unconscious in her bathtub, and more than eight months after the 22-year-old died without ever regaining consciousness to explain what happened, the results of her Georgia autopsy were finally unsealed Thursday.

But it may be another day before the public learns why the daughter of the late Whitney Houston is dead and buried in a grave in New Jersey next to her mother.

The Fulton County, Ga. medical examiner's officer "has not received a signed authorization from the court indicating whether we can release information and, if so, what type of information can be released. If we do receive authorization later today, we do not plan to release information until tomorrow, March 4, 2016, at the earliest," the medical examiner's office said on its website.

District Attorney Paul Howard, who sought to seal the autopsy for "valid public safety and investigative reasons," and still wants to keep it from the public, issued a statement conceding defeat and urging the media to behave with "discretion."

Bobbi Kristina Brown has died

"It is our feeling that those valid reasons still exist; however, as citizens and officers of the court we must, nevertheless, follow the orders and instructions of the court," Howard's statement said. "We would hope that news agencies and the media receiving the report would do so with the discretion and dignity a family who has lost a loved one deserves.

"Our investigation into the death of Bobbi Kristina Brown will continue."

Authorities in Fulton County outside Atlanta, where Bobbi Kristina had lived in a Roswell townhouse, have known the results of the autopsy since it was conducted. Howard sought and obtained a seal order in September 2015, arguing behind closed doors to Superior Court Judge Henry Newkirk that the autopsy report had to be sealed to protect the investigation of what had happened to Bobbi Kristina.

For months, local and national media complied; finally, Atlanta TV station WXIA, or 11Alive, a Tegna media company formerly a part of USA TODAY's parent company, went to court to demand the release of the autopsy results on First Amendment grounds.

A superior court judge has granted a motion to unseal the autopsy report for Bobbi Kristina Brown.

In a hearing Thursday, the station's lawyer argued that the sealing order should be vacated because it was entered without public notice and without a public hearing in violation of longstanding law that autopsy results are public records.

County authorities countered that some public records can be sealed under certain circumstances, that the investigation of Brown's mysterious death was still unfinished, and that releasing the results could put it at risk.

Newkirk, after pointing out that prosecutors have had months to file charges, granted the TV station's motion to disclose the records.

Publicists and lawyers for Bobby Brown, Whitney's ex-husband and Bobbi Kristina's father, and for Houston's family did not return requests for comment.

Bobbi Kristina was found unresponsive in her bathtub on Jan. 31, 2015, in an eerie reprise of what happened to her mother three years before in a Beverly Hills hotel. Bobbi Kristina never regained consciousness and remained in a coma for almost six months before dying at a hospice outside Atlanta on July 26, 2015.

Documents: Nick Gordon injected Bobbi Kristina with toxic mixture

Since then, the conservator for Bobbi Kristina's million-dollar estate has filed a civil suit against Nick Gordon, her ex-boyfriend, accusing Gordon of injecting her with a "toxic" substance that led to her death. The suit also accuses him of beating her and stealing money from her account without authorization.

But no criminal charges against Gordon, or anyone else, have been filed in connection with Brown's death. Gordon's lawyers did not return a request for comment on the autopsy release.

Gordon, who last year got into frequent Twitter fights with Bobby Brown, on Feb. 11 tweeted a picture of himself and Bobbi Kristina and Whitney Houston.

Tweets with replies by Nick Gordon (@Nickdgordon) | Twitter

Among the arguments for unsealing the autopsy, attorneys for 11Alive cited the dramatic rise in heroin in the area. If Bobbi Kristina died from a heroin overdose, as some have speculated, it would be in the public's interest to know, the station's lawyers said.

Bobbi Kristina's connection to The Triangle investigation

The station last week aired a four-part digital documentary, Inside the Triangle, about heroin use in Atlanta's northern affluent suburbs, which uncovered a connection between Bobbi Kristina and three heroin-related deaths in the area.

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