Elvis Presley’s achievements in life as a performer, recording artist and movie star are legend. Yet even after death, he has continued to achieve. Decades after his passing, he had a #1 hit single and album. He was the only music artist honored with two U.S. postage stamps. The 1993 stamp is the most popular U.S. commemorative stamp of all time with 517 million issued. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018. His Memphis home, Graceland, with over 650,000 visitors annually, is second only to the White House among the most visited homes in America. With numerous individual and corporate stakeholders, Elvis is still an over a billion dollar a year multifaceted industry.¹

Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

At the age of 42, Elvis died suddenly on Aug. 16, 1977, at Graceland. He was about to embark on another sold-out nationwide tour. After he was pronounced dead at Baptist Memorial Hospital, Dr. George Nichopoulos, Elvis’s doctor, secured from Elvis’s father, Vernon Presley, written authorization for an autopsy. As required by Tennessee law, the hospital notified Dr. Jerry Francisco, the Shelby County Medical Examiner,² who had served in that position since 1961 and performed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s autopsy. He was also a nationally renowned University of Tennessee professor and had trained countless pathologists.³

Elvis’s autopsy took place at the hospital instead of the medical examiner’s facilities across the street because hundreds of distraught fans were outside and disorder was feared. With a crying multitude outside, Francisco, his assistants and hospital staff performed the autopsy. (Dan Warlick, later a prominent Nashville criminal defense attorney, was then chief investigator for the Medical Examiner’s Office. Warlick attended the autopsy and greatly assisted the inquiry.) Tissue samples were sent to multiple labs across the country. Then Francisco prepared his official report and completed and signed the death certificate.⁴ The conclusion was Elvis died of “cardiac arrhythmia” (a heart attack).⁵

Francisco found “no evidence of drug abuse,” and said, “I feel as confident as I can be that drugs played no part in his death.”⁶ In addition, Elvis’s “heart was enlarged by about a third due to high blood pressure.”⁷ Elvis’s family had a history of heart disease, and Francisco explained that “there was plaque with up to 50 percent narrowing in two major coronary vessels.”⁸ Another physician at the autopsy confirmed that the prescribed medications in Elvis’s body were at “sublethal levels.”⁹ Francisco added: “None of the drugs in Elvis’ system nor any combination of them could have interrupted the electrical activity to Elvis’ heart.”¹⁰ He later observed: “Because there were drugs, there was a population of people who wanted it to be a drug death.”¹¹

‘Too Much Monkey Business’

Francisco was correct that many desired “a drug death,” but there were even worse agendas rooted in sensationalism and greed. For instance, a tabloid offered him $10,000 for copies of the autopsy photos.¹² Others rushed to exploit the death by trafficking in conspiracy theories. The first leading to litigation was when an imaginative Larry Sellers sued reporter Geraldo Rivera and the ABC television network for breach of contract, copyright infringement and misappropriation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. After summary judgment was granted for the defendants, Sellers appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.¹³

Sellers approached Rivera in June 1978 with a scoop about Elvis’s death. Prior to disclosure, Sellers required Rivera to sign a contract: Rivera and ABC would get an “exclusive” and Sellers would get credit and copyright privileges. The story, ignoring the official autopsy, went as follows: For three years, Elvis’s doctor prescribed cortisone to Elvis. Then the doctor and a bodyguard substituted a placebo for the cortisone. This caused the collapse of Elvis’s cardiovascular system and death.

The alleged motive for murder was to prevent Elvis from seeking repayment of a $1.3 million loan used to build a commercial racquetball facility. However, if that mode of death proved untrue, then, as an alternative, Sellers contended that the doctor or the bodyguard suffocated Elvis. Of course, Rivera wanted proof and Sellers went to work trying to find it. Sellers later said he found the proof but would not produce it.¹⁴

Nine months later, Rivera and ABC aired a special hour-long investigative report. Despite Francisco’s findings, the report claimed that Elvis died from the interaction of prescription drugs or “polypharmacy.” Rivera and ABC also presented follow-up reports. None of the broadcasts mentioned murder by withdrawal of cortisone or suffocation. Nevertheless, Sellers sued asserting he also told Rivera that Elvis might have died from the interaction of negligently prescribed drugs.¹⁵

In 1982, the 11th Circuit held that even if Sellers suggested that Elvis may have died from medical malpractice, the allegation is far too vague to be enforceable and had been bandied about in the press prior to Sellers’s meeting with Rivera. Hence, such a suggestion, if made, was not exclusive and could not constitute property. Furthermore, even if the cortisone or suffocation murder theories were specific enough to be enforceable, defendants did not use them. The dismissal was affirmed.¹⁶

Geraldo Rivera Kathy Hutchins via Shutterstock

‘Suspicious Minds’

Geraldo Rivera was not the only reporter seeking scandal. Two journalists with ABC’s “20/20” program filed suit in Shelby County Chancery Court before Chancellor D. J. Allisandratos. Plaintiffs sought court-ordered intervention by the district attorney, Hugh Stanton, as a party plaintiff and ultimately a writ of mandamus compelling Francisco to provide the complete toxicological, pharmacological and autopsy reports used in preparing his official report on Elvis’s death. The chancellor granted summary judgment in favor of the defense and plaintiffs appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court.¹⁷

Justice Ray Brock, in writing for the court in 1982, held that the district attorney is not legally bound to commence a mandamus action upon the demand of a private citizen. Such a decision is in his sound discretion and that discretion was not abused.¹⁸ Furthermore, the court noted that the autopsy was a private procedure ordered by Elvis’s father, not the district attorney. By agreement between Francisco and the hospital, Francisco returned the reports after using them to complete his report and the death certificate. He was under no legal obligation to retain them and using their information did not convert them into public documents. Therefore, they were beyond Francisco’s possession or control. Accordingly, Chancery’s dismissal was affirmed¹⁹

Dr. Jerry T. Francisco (right) with his lawyer. Bettman via Getty Images

‘Clean Up Your Own Back Yard’

The Shelby County Board of Commissioners filed suit in Davidson County Chancery, before Chancellor Irvin H. Kilcrease Jr., seeking a writ of mandamus requiring the state registrar of vital records to investigate, including a review of medical records and alleged irregularities or possible violations of law concerning Francisco’s statements on Elvis’s death certificate. Chancellor Kilcrease dismissed the case for failure to state a claim. An appeal was filed with the Court of Appeals.²⁰

In 1994, the appellate court, in an opinion written by Judge Henry F. Todd, recounted the commission’s averments, chiefly the allegations of a 1991 book, The Death of Elvis: What Really Happened by Charles Thompson and James Cole. As cited in the complaint, the book attacked Francisco’s finding that Elvis died of heart disease and, moreover, it said there was “no evidence of disease.” The book insisted Elvis died of “an overdose of multiple drugs.”²¹

Judge Todd also quoted from the commission’s own complaint as follows: “[T]he Chief Medical Examiner of the State of Tennessee had examined all relevant documents and concluded that there was insufficient reason to conclude that any irregularities or violations of law had occurred in connection with the certificate.”²²

The Court of Appeals held that “hearsay” and “what might have been”²³ and a “suspicion”²⁴ there “may be inaccurate”²⁵ or “false and/or misleading statements”²⁶ in the death certificate, culminating in “a suggestion of the possibility of a violation” of law, fails to state a claim.²⁷ Furthermore, “the authority to investigate is not a mandatory duty to investigate, especially in the absence of a serious allegation of the actual occurrence of a violation.”²⁸ Finally, the county commission lacked supervisory authority over the state registrar, nor was that local legislative body prejudiced in performing its duties by the official’s failure to accede to its “purely private demands” about a matter it had “no interest.”²⁹ Once again, Chancery was affirmed.³⁰

Dr. Jerry Francisco retired as medical examiner in 1999. In 2008, over 30 years after the autopsy, he said: “I spoke the truth as I saw it. I was comfortable when I said it, and I’m comfortable with it now.”³¹ Perhaps the unsuccessful plaintiffs in the above cases could have benefited from Elvis’s advice: “Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son.”³² |||

RUSSELL FOWLER is director of litigation and advocacy at Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET), and since 1999 he has been adjunct professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He served as the law clerk to Chancellor C. Neal Small in Memphis and earned his law degree at the University of Memphis in 1987. Fowler has written many publications on law and legal history, and is a regular columnist for the Journal. He received the TBA’s Justice Joseph W. Henry Award for Outstanding Legal Writing for 2023.

NOTES
1. See Graceland: The Home of Elvis Presley, “Quick Facts,” www.graceland.com/quick-facts (last visited Jan. 30, 2026).
2. State ex rel. Cole v. Francisco, 643 v. Francisco, 643 S.W.2d 105, 106-7 (Tenn. 1982).
3. Michael Lollar, Despite Detractors, Ex-Medical Examiner Defends Elvis Conclusions, Commercial Appeal (Memphis), Aug. 10, 2008.
4. Cole at 108.
5. Lollar, supra note 3.
6. Samuel Spencer, How Did Elvis Presley Die? Newsweek, Jun. 23, 2022.
7. Id.
8. Lollar, supra note 3.
9. Id.
10. Id.
11. Id.
12. Id.
13. Sellers v. ABC, 668 F.2d 1207, 1207-08 (11th Cir. 1982).   
14. Id. at 1209.
15. Id.
16. Id. at 1209-10.
17. State ex rel. Cole v. Francisco, 643 v. Francisco, 643 S.W.2d 105, 106-7 (Tenn. 1982).
18. Id. at 106.
19. Id. at 108-9.
20. Board of County Commissioners v. Taylor, No. 01-A-01-9403-CH-00126 1994 LEXIS 452, at 1-2 (Tenn. Ct. App. Aug. 12, 1994).
21. Id. at 6-7.
22. Id. at 4.
23. Id. at 14.
24. Id. at 13.
25. Id.
26. Id. at 4.
27. Id.
28. Id. at 15.
29. Id. at 18-19.
30. Id. at 19.
31. Lollar, supra note 3.
32. Graceland: The Home of Elvis Presley, “Quotes By Elvis,” www.graceland.com/quotes-by-elvis, (last visited Jan. 30, 2026).