Understanding death and our system that addresses it.

In this new episode the listener will learn about how our death investigation system functions. There are two very strong entities involved with this. One is the police and their pursuit to investigation violations of the law; and in this case violent acts against people, many becoming homicides. While the other entity are the Coroners and Medical Examiners who are basically the Medico-legal death investigators, but with a different process and set of rules or guidelines to follow.

Generally speaking Coroners are elected and Medical Examiners are appointed. There are approximately 2,200 Coroner offices in the USA while we only have about 450 Medical Examiner offices. Medical Examiners are usually Forensic Pathologists, while a Coroner can be an MD, most are not and the education level could be as low as just a high school diploma, depending on the state you live in.

Medical Examiners and Coroners make cause and manner of death determinations. The cause of death is the medical reason for the death such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease or stab wound to the chest. But when it comes to determinizing the manner of death (a legal term) the Coroner/Medical Examiner is tasked to label the death as either a Homicide, Suicide, Accident, Natural or in some cases, Undetermined. These determinations are based on the international standard for the coding of deaths and should be pretty much the same worldwide.

The most critical aspect of this death investigation system is that both the police and the Coroner or Medical Examiner, while separate entities, must work together and communicate their findings to each other so that a proper and accurate determination is made and if needed, justice is served.

The below image/map of the USA illustrates the different systems in our country. However, if you are more interested in seeing the details you can access the CDC interactive map at:

https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/publications/coroner/death.html