Death Certificate Issued For Smith

Authorities issued a death certificate for the son of Anna Nicole Smith but left the cause of death undetermined pending toxicology tests, a lawyer for the former reality TV star's family said Thursday.

Attorney Michael Scott said the document will let Smith bury the remains of 20-year-old Daniel Smith, who died Sept. 10 at his mother's hospital bedside in the Bahamas.

Filed on Wednesday, the death certificate lists the cause as "pending chemical analysis," said Chief Magistrate Roger Gomez.

"It is not unusual in instances where the cause of death cannot be determined to issue a death certificate," Gomez told The Associated Press. "This is not a matter of special treatment being given in this particular case."

Scott also said Thursday that Smith, 38, planned to file documents registering the birth of her 2-week-old daughter, but he declined to reveal the girl's name. He added that Anna Nicole Smith has been granted permanent residency in the Bahamas, where she came to avoid media scrutiny during her pregnancy.

Anna Nicole Smith's lawyer and confidante, Howard K. Stern, said Wednesday that Smith just got the first of three toxicology reports and it came back negative for any illegal substances.

In an exclusive interview with E! News, Stern said that they found, as expected, Lexapro and Ambien in his system, but not at levels that could have caused Daniel's death.

Stern told E! News the first report was based on blood drawn at the hospital at the time of Daniel's death.

The two remaining toxicology reports yet to be released were based on two separate autopsies performed by Bahamian officials and Anna's private pathologist, Cyril Wecht.

"There's no reason to believe there's going to be a significant level of Ambien in him," Wecht tells People magazine. "It is not a powerful drug. You'd have to take a lot of it. It's not the best drug if you want to drive, but putting you to sleep is one thing — killing you is another."

A planned jury inquest into the death of Daniel Smith may be canceled if tests show that that the son of reality TV star Anna Nicole Smith died of natural causes, a legal official in the Bahamas said Wednesday.

Chief Magistrate Roger Gomez said authorities are reconsidering the need for the inquest, which had been scheduled for Oct. 23 and was to include Anna Nicole Smith among the witnesses.

She is gradually recovering from her son's death, Scott said.

"She's much better," he told the AP. "You never get over that, you get through it. Time is the catalyst for that."

It will likely be two weeks before pathologists receive test results, said Scott, who is the attorney for Daniel Smith's estate.

Authorities say there is no evidence of homicide or suicide. A private examiner has said Smith was taking a low dose of antidepressants at the time of his death but he did not know if it was a factor.

Scott criticized the island chain's head coroner, Linda Virgill, for labeling the death "suspicious" last week and saying that her office knew the cause of death before toxicology tests were complete.

"Unless she's psychic or God, unless the pathologists know the cause of death, how does she?" said Scott, adding that some in the Bahamas worried the highly publicized case was affecting the island chain's image.

"We are all aware of what happened in Aruba. We are all aware of what happened to Natalee Holloway," he said, referring to the high-profile disappearance last year of an Alabama teen. "We don't want that to happen in this jurisdiction."

Virgill did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

On Wednesday, Gomez announced an overhaul of the system for medical inquests Wednesday in part because of complaints of preferential treatment that arose when Virgill scheduled an inquest just three days after Smith's death — despite a backlog of other cases.

The New York Post reported Thursday that Chief Justice Burton Hall removed Virgill from the case.

Larry Birkhead, a photojournalist who claims to be the newborn girl's father, said he regretted missing the birth as he was shown photos of the girl by a correspondent for TV show "Entertainment Tonight."

"It just seems like I should have been on the other side of this picture," Birkhead said.

Smith's camp has been silent on the identity of the girl's father.

Daniel Smith, who appeared several times on the E! reality series "The Anna Nicole Show," was the son of Anna Nicole and Bill Smith, who married in 1985 and divorced two years later.

Anna Nicole married Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II in 1994, when the former Playboy Playmate was 26 and he was 89. He died the following year and she has since been involved in legal disputes over the estate.