Checking out the duties of a coroner or medical examiner
The duties of the coroner and ME are diverse, but many of them relate to the forensic investigation of death, including
✔ Determining the cause and manner of death
✔ Establishing the identity of any unnamed corpses
✔ Estimating the time of death
✔ Supervising the collection of evidence from the body
✔ Searching for any contributory factors such as disease
✔ Correlating wounds with the weapons that may have been used to inflict them
✔ Certifying or signing the death certificate
In fulfilling these duties, the coroner or ME uses any and all available information. Reviewing witness statements, visiting crime scenes, reviewing collected evidence and the results of crime lab testing, and, if a pathologist, performing autopsies are part of this endeavor.
In addition, the coroner or ME performs other duties not directly related to death investigations. These include
✔ Examining injuries of the living and determining their cause and timing
✔ Providing expert testimony in court
✔ Overseeing the crime lab (in some areas)
Following the medical examiner in action
When faced with an unexplained death, the ME takes a systematic approach to evaluating the case. This approach is similar to the one taken by physicians who treat the ill. Good physicians take a complete patient history, perform a thorough physical exam, order appropriate laboratory tests, and make an informed diagnosis. Only after this process can treatment begin.
The ME, on the other hand, obviously cannot obtain a direct history from the deceased but nevertheless can obtain information from police reports, medical records, witness statements, and interviews with family members, law enforcement, and other medical personnel. To help gather the needed information, the ME may possess (in some jurisdictions) or receive subpoena power from the court and can therefore legally require someone to provide information or evidence such as a blood sample, fingerprint, or shoe impression.
If no evidence of any potentially lethal trauma is seen, the ME then looks for natural causes of death by reviewing medical records, perhaps discussing the death with the person’s physician or performing an autopsy when necessary. These investigations may lead the ME to conclude that the person died as a result of a natural cause, such as a heart attack, an infection, diabetes, or any number of other diseases.
When no natural cause is present or evident, however, the ME explores other manners of death, looking for less-obvious forms of trauma, poisons or drugs, or other signs of accidental, suicidal, or homicidal death.
After the analysis is complete, the ME files a report in which the essentials of the case are laid out and a conclusion is reached regarding the cause, mechanism, and manner of death.
The ME’s opinion is not written in stone and can change if new evidence comes to light that suggests a previously ruled natural death may not have been so natural after all.
The coroner’s technician is an extension of the coroner/ME and is indeed the ME’s representative at the crime scene and works with the ME at the morgue. These technicians are often the ones who actually deal with the body at any crime scene where a death has occurred.
The coroner’s technician may do the following:
✔ Make a cursory examination of the body
✔ Obtain a core (liver) body temperature, which is critical in determining the time of death (see Chapter 11)
✔ Direct the taking of photographs of the body
✔ Collect any trace or insect evidence from the body
✔ Wrap and transport the body to the ME’s office
The technician may also assist the ME in all the examiner’s duties at the morgue and may
✔ Perform or help with the performance of autopsies
✔ Prepare the autopsy report at the direction of the ME
✔ Communicate with the public, the media, and law enforcement on issues relating to the medical examiner’s office
✔ Explain the autopsy procedure and its results to family members of the deceased
✔ Testify in court as the ME’s representative
After they have analyzed the evidence, members of the forensics team may be called upon to explain it in court. Expert testimony can often make or break a case, and experts – be they medical examiners, crime-scene investigators, toxicologists, or other key players – can be called to testify by either the prosecution or the defense. In turn, their testimony may be refuted by the testimony of experts with different opinions.
The sworn duty of the ME is to present the facts in court and offer an unbiased opinion based on those facts. She is solely responsible for presenting evidence in court because she is in many ways an officer of the court. The ME may ask a member of her staff or of the crime lab to present evidence, but the ME is the one who is ultimately responsible to the court.
The ME may be asked to discuss and explain the forensic evidence and render an expert opinion regarding the evidence to the judge and jury. In this regard, the ME acts as an educator as well as a scientist. The ME often is the only person from whom a jury hears complex scientific information presented in an understandable way. At other times, the ME must pit knowledge and communication skills against other experts with different opinions.
Many of the procedures that are commonly employed in criminal cases, and that are discussed in this book, have never been adequately subjected to scientific scrutiny. Bite mark analysis, trace evidence such as hair and fiber analysis, and even fingerprints, to name a few, have been questioned in the courts and in scientific circles. The facts are that none of these techniques have ever been adequately tested for accuracy or reliability. Does this mean that they are no longer viable forensic scientific procedures? Not at all. It simply means that the techniques used in their analysis and the qualifications of the examiners must be better defined and standardized.
The 2009 study done by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) titled Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward started the ball rolling. Since then, organizations such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Organization of Scientific Area