Coroner Stories

I’m embarrassed to admit how long ago the following question was asked. I remember setting it aside because it was a good topic and I wanted to give it a well developed answer. Thanks for your patience, Terri.

I do understand that sometimes other investigative agencies other than the coroner are relied upon to determine manner of death, but let’s say someone has a gun shot wound. All agencies know who shot this person. The question is “was it justifiable or not?” Doesn’t the coroner list the manner as homicide regardless of the justifiability?–Terri

Terri:

It depends on the particular agency or in some cases the individual that is certifying the death. Some agencies have policies on how they rule certain deaths based on a literal interpretation of the circumstances or on the charges that are likely to be filed. In some situations, the element of “intent” may help determine the manner of death.

Let’s say someone breaks into my house and I shoot them before they shoot me. I admit to the police that I’m the one who shot the intruder. Upon examination, the victim is found to have a distant range gunshot wound to the chest. When it comes to certifying, the Medical Examiner/Coroner (ME/C) is primarily focused on how the decedent died and not the issue of justifiability. That’s an issue for the law enforcement agency and the district attorney’s office to sort out when they decide whether or not to press charges.

Additionally, U.S. death certificates typically only have six options for classifying the death with no provision for justifiability. These are as follows:

–Natural
–Accident
–Suicide
–Homicide
–Pending Investigation (or Pending Further Studies)
–Could not be determined (or Undetermined)

In my shooting scenario, there’s a gunshot wound involved so Natural is out. I intentionally discharged the weapon, so Accident is out. The victim didn’t pull the trigger, so Suicide is out. The certifier may elect to classify the death as Pending Investigation/Further Studies, but at some point they have to place the death into one of the other categories when the investigation is officially completed. “Could not be determined” doesn’t apply because we know what happened.

Let’s say the above victim was actually found dead in his front yard with the same distant range gunshot wound to the chest. Without knowing the particular circumstances of the shooting, we can infer that someone else pulled the trigger and the death should therefore be classified as a Homicide.

Now, let’s say I was out hunting with some friends of mine, my shotgun accidentally discharged, and one of my friends was fatally shot. Two separate investigations would then follow. Law enforcement would investigate the shooting incident and the ME/C would investigate the resulting death. Regardless of my intent, our policy would have been to classify the death as a Homicide because we use the literal definition of Homicide—the killing of one person by another.

Even though the manner of death is listed as Homicide, law enforcement may conclude that the shooting was indeed accidental and the prosecutor may decline to press charges. The end result is that the ME/C has taken law enforcement’s investigation into consideration but ruled differently. Conversely, the ME/C may classify a motor vehicle fatality as accidental, but the agency and prosecutor may elect to pursue manslaughter charges because the surviving driver was intoxicated.

The reliance of the ME/C on other investigative agencies to accurately classify the manner of death is really quite common. The postmortem examination can verify that someone died from a hard contact gunshot wound to the head, but—in the absence of obvious physical evidence—such an examination will not indicate unequivocally that the wound was self-inflicted. It is typically law enforcement’s investigation that provides the information necessary to distinguish between a suicide and a homicide. Details such as recent personal loss, severe depression, or suicidal ideation are common indicators of suicidal intent.

I should also point out that there’s a reciprocal element to this reliance. Many times the law enforcement agency may treat a death as a natural event pending any information to the contrary from the ME/C.

I recall years ago seeing people on television or out in public having important conversations on their cell phones. That was long before every teenager, grandparent, and civil servant succumbed to the technological appeal of staying connected with everyone other teenager, grandparent, and civil servant outside of North Korea. Back when ownership of a cell phone was the societal equivalent of driving a Mercedes. Now when I see three people seated at the Food Court having three independent cell phone conversations, it seems cell phone ownership has become the societal equivalent of riding a Huffy.

Back then, I always wondered what it must be like to have a job so important that a cell phone was critical. One of those jobs that required a person to be available at all times. Something impressive like a corporate executive, a Hollywood mogul, or a government agent.

Now that I have one—the job and the phone—I don’t wonder about that sort of thing anymore. Now I hate my phone. Keep in mind that 95% of the time that my phone rings it means that somebody has died. I’ve even developed an aversion to answering my phone at home. The only people that call my home phone tend to be telemarketers, but I guess every now and then I like to talk on something that doesn’t accelerate the growth of the tumor on the right side of my head.

I don’t even know why I keep the land line. It’s like a dog that never gets played with, but the owner keeps buying food for it every month. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t tear up the furniture or crap in the house when I’m out later than usual. Everyone knows they can connect directly to my hip 24/7 and I’ll answer unless I’m gloved up or in the shower. Come to think of it, I’ve worked plenty of scenes where both conditions applied. (See my post “Suicide Foresight.�?)

The best part about cell phones–besides the fact I haven’t paid a cell phone bill in years–is that just about every cop has a cell phone. Gone are the days of trying to return a call to a private residence and getting a busy signal for an hour at 3 a.m. because the family has the phone tied up. The police are also able to use their cell phones instead of their radios on certain scenes in order to keep the media from hearing about the incident over their police scanners. Inevitably some citizen sees all the police activity and calls the local station’s “When you see news happen�? hotline using their cell phone.

For anyone going in to this line of work, I have a bit of advice–be sure you get the optional phone insurance. I’ve noticed that the smaller the cell phones get, the fewer impacts against the bedroom wall they seem able to withstand.

Yet.  For now, I’m still among the living.  My apologies to anyone who’s been checking back for some new material.  I had no idea it’s been that long since my last post.  I intentionally took a few weeks off and before I knew it a few months had passed–just long enough for me to forget the passwords to the site administrator and my email server.  I was lucky enough to find where I’d written them down right before the holidays, and my New Year’s resolution was to get back to posting regularly.  I went to bed, woke up, and realized it was the middle of January.  2006 was a record year for deaths even before the holiday season.  Bad for the general public but good for job security.  Like retailers, we see an increase in traffic around Thanksgiving but without the resulting economic prosperity.

Further apologies to anyone who has emailed me the last few months.  I’ve also learned that in my absence, the spam screener for both my email account and comments section has been overly agressive and rejected quite a few valid submissions.  With the help of my brother-in-law, that issue seems to be corrected now.  I’ll be working on posting comments and responding to emails as soon as my next post is up, which should be this weekend.