Law Prof May Have Taken Her Own Life

A Chapman University School of Law professor who died after falling from an Irvine parking garage may have committed suicide, authorities said today. 

Forty-seven-year-old Katherine D. Darmer of Newport Beach was pronounced dead at 12:24 p.m. Friday, after falling from a parking structure in the 19000 block of MacArthur Boulevard., according to the Orange County coroner's office.

Orange County Supervising Deputy Coroner Daniel Aiken told the Los Angeles Times today their preliminary findings indicated the professor took her own life.

"Our investigations are not complete yet," Aiken told the Times. An autopsy remains pending and an official cause of death -- suicide or accident -- has not yet been determined.

Darmer joined Chapman's full-time faculty in 2000, specializing in criminal law procedure, according to her profile page on the school's website. She taught courses on criminal procedure, advanced criminal procedure and evidence.

She was also a founding board member and chair of the legal team for the Orange County Equality Coalition. She spoke out on marriage equality, against the War on Terror and the use of cooperating witnesses.

Darmer spoke at an August 2010 "OC Pride" rally held days after a federal judge overturned a California law banning same-sex marriage. She also participated in a Chapman debate with John Yoo, a Bush administration lawyer whose memos justified waterboarding.

Darmer earned her A.B. from Princeton University, with high honors, and her Juris Doctorate was from Columbia University, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar for two years.

Prior to joining Chapman, she worked as an assistant U.S. Attorney in New York City. In 1992, while working at Davis Polk and Wardwell, Darmer helped successfully defend Delta Air Lines in a $2.5 billion lawsuit brought by Pan Am for its collapse, the Orange County Register reported.

Chapman University described her as a "wife and mother" but did not release details about her survivors, or funeral plans.