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Body Bags: Coroner Versus Medical Examiner · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Bodybags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Over the course of my career,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time working for the corner
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: or working with corners and training corners all over the
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  Speaker 1: United States. Now as a college professor, I study them.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: But many people don't know anything about that office. It's
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: ancient and old. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
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  Speaker 1: Bodybags back with me again. It's my good friend Jackie Howard,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: executive producer of Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. We're gonna
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  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about corners today. Well you're gonna
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  Speaker 1: have to school me, Joe, because we know there are corners,
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  Speaker 1: and we know there are medical examiners. So which do
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  Speaker 1: you want to talk about first? To explain to me
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  Speaker 1: what they are and what's the difference. We got to
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  Speaker 1: start with coroners, Jackie, because it's one of the biggest
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  Speaker 1: questions that folks, you know, they want to know, you know,
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  Speaker 1: what is a corner because many people don't know. And
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  Speaker 1: of course you know, it's like any great story, and
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  Speaker 1: trust me, the story of corners is fascinating. You got
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  Speaker 1: to start at the beginning. I got to tell you, you
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  Speaker 1: you know, the first time I ever heard the term,
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  Speaker 1: you know, when it was Jackie. I was actually a
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  Speaker 1: high school student. And in my high school they offered
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  Speaker 1: a course that was called fan Intology, and I didn't
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  Speaker 1: really know what it was, and I took it as
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  Speaker 1: an elect Hey that again, it was called what fan antology?
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  Speaker 1: Fan for me? Yes Tha n okay fan okay, fan intology,
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  Speaker 1: And actually it's the study of death and all things
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  Speaker 1: involving death. We got to go to graveyards, we got
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  Speaker 1: to go to funeral homes, and you know, it kind
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  Speaker 1: of started an interest on my part about, you know,
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  Speaker 1: what was this world all about? And I heard them
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  Speaker 1: talking about the term corner and I didn't know what
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  Speaker 1: it meant. I just knew that it had something to
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  Speaker 1: do with the dead, and and through my own you know,
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  Speaker 1: kind of elementary reasoning at that point in time, I thought, well, coroner,
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  Speaker 1: it probably has something to do with the heart, you know,
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  Speaker 1: like coronary artery. I couldn't be further from the truth.
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  Speaker 1: And you have to go all the way back to
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  Speaker 1: a time in England before there was a Great Britain.
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  Speaker 1: It was actually the country of England, a standalone country,
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  Speaker 1: all the way back to the times of Alfred the Great,
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  Speaker 1: one of the first kings of England, and there is
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  Speaker 1: evidence that the term corner was mentioned, but it wasn't
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  Speaker 1: actually the word corner. They actually were referred to back
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  Speaker 1: then as crowners. And over the years that term evolved
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  Speaker 1: from the word crowner to corner. And why why crowner?
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  Speaker 1: I think that a lot of people would scratch their
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  Speaker 1: heads and wonder, well, they were actually the representatives of
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  Speaker 1: the crown, and they were they were They were there
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  Speaker 1: to hear the please It was called hearing the pleas
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  Speaker 1: of the Crown, if you will, And there were these
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  Speaker 1: three nights that were assigned to this duty. They would
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  Speaker 1: travel around and they would essentially work as kind of
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  Speaker 1: de facto death investigators, trying to figure out what had
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  Speaker 1: happened in that environment. But there their purpose was not
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  Speaker 1: to necessarily solve crimes or try to find out rationales.
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  Speaker 1: It was to collect money. And that's you know, some
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  Speaker 1: people point to this period of time is when the
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  Speaker 1: death tax actually began to be enforced and to take place.
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  Speaker 1: And I think I have a lot of people that
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  Speaker 1: have come to me over the years and they'll say,
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  Speaker 1: you know, we've heard that it's illegal to commit suicide,
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  Speaker 1: and that that had actually been on the books at
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  Speaker 1: some point time. And you know, interestingly enough, it was
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  Speaker 1: declared at one point in time that it was in
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  Speaker 1: fact illegal to commit suicide, but it had nothing to
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  Speaker 1: do with the destination of your eternal, immortal soul, as
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  Speaker 1: a lot of people think that it had some kind
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  Speaker 1: of connection to the church. The thing was was that
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  Speaker 1: back during these times, if an individual took their own life,
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  Speaker 1: that means that if this could be proven, then every
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  Speaker 1: bit of property that they had, guess where it would go,
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  Speaker 1: it would be forfeited to the crown so they could collect.
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  Speaker 1: So there was like a motivation on the parts of
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  Speaker 1: these representatives of the crown to go out and certainly
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  Speaker 1: make a determination about to cause death. I really wonder
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  Speaker 1: all those years ago, if they kind of listed toward
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  Speaker 1: a manner of death that would have been qualified as
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  Speaker 1: suicide because all the money, all your property, all your
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  Speaker 1: livestock would be taken, and it didn't matter what station
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  Speaker 1: you held in life, so it would be reverted over
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  Speaker 1: to the crown. And you know, you go forward, you
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  Speaker 1: know a few years from there, and people have heard
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  Speaker 1: of Richard the Lionhearted. Well he was kind of he's
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  Speaker 1: kind of the the if you will, the spiritual father,
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  Speaker 1: I guess, if you will, or this ancient person that
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  Speaker 1: existed during that period of time that kind of formalized
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  Speaker 1: the office of crown or slash corner because he was
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  Speaker 1: all fighting crusades and he was not getting money or
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  Speaker 1: revenue from the sheriffs. You've heard of the evil Sheriff
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  Speaker 1: of Nottingham and the robin Hood legacy, and that can
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  Speaker 1: be traced back to that period of time and Evil
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  Speaker 1: King John that was in place of King Richard. Well,
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  Speaker 1: King Richard needed a source of funds and so he
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  Speaker 1: would send these crowners out to collect money on his
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  Speaker 1: behalf so he could continue to prosecute these crusades and
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  Speaker 1: ransoms and all of these things that were taking place
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  Speaker 1: during that period of time. But after period of time,
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  Speaker 1: the office began to evolve and it just became part
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  Speaker 1: and parcel of English common law, and still to this
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  Speaker 1: day it exists. There's certainly a quite a few years
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  Speaker 1: between those days and these. So what does a coroner
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  Speaker 1: do and how does a corner get into office? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's it's gonna vary from state to state. Essentially, what
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  Speaker 1: the requirements are going to be to be a corner.
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  Speaker 1: And still roughly about half the states in the United
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  Speaker 1: States still hold on to this office of corner. Remember
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  Speaker 1: when the British colonies, you know, and you know, you
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  Speaker 1: think back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and these sorts
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  Speaker 1: of things, they didn't just leave England behind. They brought
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  Speaker 1: English common law with them. And so when they brought
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  Speaker 1: all of these offices together, and kind of backing up
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  Speaker 1: a little bit, that ancient document, the Magna Carta, people
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  Speaker 1: don't realize how old these offices are actually. I think
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  Speaker 1: it's like in the twenty of a paragraph of the
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  Speaker 1: Magna Carta. You can still see it if you look
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  Speaker 1: at a copy of it. The word sheriff, bailiff, and
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  Speaker 1: corner are all mentioned in the same line. That's how
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  Speaker 1: old these offices are. And it goes back. This goes
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  Speaker 1: back to the early twelve hundreds when the Magna Carta
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  Speaker 1: was instituted, and so that law came over to the
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  Speaker 1: US or to the colonies at that point in time,
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  Speaker 1: because they had no other framework to kind of go
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  Speaker 1: off of, you know, so they we're going to maintain this,
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  Speaker 1: and so the corners in the US as we see
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  Speaker 1: them now essentially evolved from those early days. And you
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  Speaker 1: can go from state to state, and every now and
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  Speaker 1: then you'll come across these weird kind of what we
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  Speaker 1: refer to as amalgams of corners and medical examiners and
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  Speaker 1: all these sorts of things, and it's really it gets confusing.
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  Speaker 1: But just so folks understand, they're in many states, and
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  Speaker 1: not all, but in many states there is no real
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  Speaker 1: educational requirement for a corner and that's one of the
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  Speaker 1: knocks against the system that if you go to run
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  Speaker 1: for the office of coroner, that you don't have to
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  Speaker 1: be particularly degreed in a certain area. But I'll give
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  Speaker 1: you an example. As everybody knows, I started my career
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  Speaker 1: in Louisiana. Well, Louisiana is a corner state. That means
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  Speaker 1: that each one of the parishes, which are like counties,
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  Speaker 1: has its own corner. But in that state, in order
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  Speaker 1: to run for the office, you have to be a physician.
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  Speaker 1: You have to be a medical doctor in order to
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  Speaker 1: run for that office. But you go to other states
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  Speaker 1: and in some places they require nothing more than a
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  Speaker 1: geed in order to run for that office. So there's
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  Speaker 1: a desperate difference between the level of education that's going
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  Speaker 1: to vary from state to state in many cases, and
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  Speaker 1: that can leave the population wanting, you know, as far
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  Speaker 1: as thorough death investigations. And then on top of that,
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  Speaker 1: some states require corners to have formal training, and in
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  Speaker 1: other states they essentially say, good luck, here's a book
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  Speaker 1: of the laws, best of luck to you, I hope
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  Speaker 1: you do well, and they give very little training. And
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  Speaker 1: so that's a problem nationwide that has been identified over
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  Speaker 1: the years. One of the tragic things here is that
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  Speaker 1: many people never really, never really fully appreciate what the
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  Speaker 1: corner does until perhaps a corner or a corner investigator
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  Speaker 1: shows up at their doorstep to deliver them individually bad news.
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  Speaker 1: Can you imagine that's the first time you ever hear
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  Speaker 1: about a corner and then suddenly you're kind of plunged
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  Speaker 1: into this world where you have to understand what the
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  Speaker 1: office does and they what service they're supposed to provide
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  Speaker 1: to families. Once you get elected, is there a class
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  Speaker 1: A certification? I mean, are you telling me there's nothing
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  Speaker 1: in some jurisdictions that I have to do other than
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  Speaker 1: run for office. Yeah, in certain jurisdictions, Jackie, it is
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  Speaker 1: mandated that you have to go to, say, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: in certain jurisdictions, a two week course in order to
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  Speaker 1: be up to speed with the laws and the basics
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  Speaker 1: of medical legal death investigation. But when you compare that
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  Speaker 1: level of training to say, for instance, what a physician
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  Speaker 1: has to go through that might become a medical examiner,
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  Speaker 1: we can get into that there's a huge gulf of
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  Speaker 1: disparity relative to education and being a tune to what
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  Speaker 1: the form and function is of the office. And you know,
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  Speaker 1: we kind of have to understand what does a corner do. Well,
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  Speaker 1: they're actually refer too officially as the certifier of death.
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  Speaker 1: You know when you say, God, that sounds kind of odd.
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  Speaker 1: What does that mean? Well, they're the person that first
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  Speaker 1: off can validate a death to say that this individual
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  Speaker 1: has in effect died all right in this local community.
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  Speaker 1: And that's going to vary from place to place. Some
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  Speaker 1: states required that a physician actually go to the scene
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  Speaker 1: or that the body be brought to a physician and
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  Speaker 1: they declare death, whereas in certain locations the corner can
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  Speaker 1: declare death at a particular moment in time. So it's
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  Speaker 1: going to be heavily dependent upon state laws. But once
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  Speaker 1: that has taken place, it's the ball is going to
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  Speaker 1: be completely in the court of the coroner to make
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  Speaker 1: a determination as to what's going to happen after that.
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  Speaker 1: And their role is to determine, first off, what the
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  Speaker 1: manner of death is. And you've heard me mentioned this before,
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  Speaker 1: and we have five of them, which is natural, we
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  Speaker 1: have homicide, accidental suicide, and then the fifth one that's
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  Speaker 1: kind of nebulous, is called undetermined. And if you'll kind
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  Speaker 1: of imagine those five manners of death as a gigantic umbrella.
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  Speaker 1: The next the next step that corners have to do
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  Speaker 1: is determine what the cause of death is, so that
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  Speaker 1: you know that's going to be things like say, an
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  Speaker 1: acute mio cardial infarction, which is you know, it's it's
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  Speaker 1: medical ease for a heart attack. Okay, part of the
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  Speaker 1: heart muscle dies as a result of a blockage. Okay, well,
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  Speaker 1: many people in this country. A matter of fact, the
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  Speaker 1: number one killer in our country is actually heart disease.
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  Speaker 1: All right, most people are going to succumb to that.
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  Speaker 1: But the question is, can someone let's say, for instance,
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  Speaker 1: let's take let's take an acute m I as it's
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  Speaker 1: referred to in the vernacular, can someone die of a
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  Speaker 1: heart attack and that be classified as something other than
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  Speaker 1: a natural death. Well, the question is, yeah, yeah, that
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  Speaker 1: can happen. I've actually handled a case where an individual
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  Speaker 1: shocked an old man by putting a shotgun in the
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  Speaker 1: old man's face and the guy had a heart attack
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  Speaker 1: and died, and that young man was tried for murder
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  Speaker 1: and was convicted. So yeah, that can happen. It can happen.
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  Speaker 1: But more commonly, you know, we begin to think about
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  Speaker 1: things like, well, gunshot wounds, Well, what classifications can gunshot
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  Speaker 1: wounds fall under? Well, we've got certainly homicide, we've got suicide,
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  Speaker 1: and then we've got accidental, and then you might have undetermined.
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  Speaker 1: So it's up to the corner to make a determination
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  Speaker 1: as to which one of these categories that the cause
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  Speaker 1: of death is going to fit under relative to manner,
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  Speaker 1: And this can get pretty complicated, particularly when you have
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: cases that go back years and years and years where
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: you have a real hard time trying to come up
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: with the specifics of what happened, and over a period
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: of time, the individual may for instance, be layered over
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: with other disease process that have had one of the
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: things that impacted me the most. I think when I
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: was a very young corner investigators, I actually assisted in
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the autopsy of a gentleman that had been in a
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: nursing home since I think it was like nineteen forty
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: six Stateside, and he had been in there since he
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: was like twenty. I believe he finally died in the eighties.
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  Speaker 1: And he had been paralyzed essentially from his waisted down
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: or from his mid abdomen down, and had constant care
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: over all these years. And Jackie, one of the tragic
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  Speaker 1: things about this is that the reason this gentleman had
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: wound up in the nursing home to begin with was
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  Speaker 1: the fact that he had sustained a gunshot wound all
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: those years back, multiple decades back, you know, where he
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: sustained that gunshot wound at the Battle of the Bulge,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and that round had actually lodged in his spine against
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: his spinal cord and had paralyzed him. And they didn't
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: have the ability to extricate that round. They figured that
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: it would cause greater harm. And you know that, all
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: of those years later, even though he had been in
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: a nursing home, the corner at that time ruled his death,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: ruled his death as a homicide, and so I was
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: always fascinated by that, And I remember distinctly being there
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: present for the autopsy and I physically removed that projectile
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  Speaker 1: from his spine, and there I was holding that piece
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of history in my hand. And you know, now, all
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: of these years later, I think about how everything that
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: you do in life, many times relative to death investigation,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: is going to impact the future going forward. So the
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: corner has to be equipped to analyze every bit of
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: this data that comes in, particularly is that applies to
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: people's medical histories and all this. Keep in mind, contrary
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: to what you see on television, homicides only make up
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: a very very small percentage of the deaths that corners
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: and even medical examiners work. The line share of the
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: deaths are going to be some kind of natural, natural
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: disease pathology. So you have to be really attuned to
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: natural disease and kind of how it impacts the population
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: at large. Joe, you're making me shake my head because
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: it's just kind of mind boggling knowing that there are
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: different regulations depending on where you live. So you could
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: have a tremendous corner one who is highly qualified to
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: handle death scenes, or you could have Joe blow off
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the street who just has a ged. What do we
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: do with this knowledge? Yeah? Well, first off, let me
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: qualify what I'm about to say by saying this. I've
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: trained a lot of corners over the course of my career,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: and I have to say many many of the best
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: corners death investigators that I've ever worked with were people
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: that were absent some kind of high flung college degree.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: They were just good common sense people that understood practical application.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: And when it comes down to a death investigation is
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: practical common sense knowledge that the trick is understanding and learning.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: You have to be self taught in a lot of
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: these areas about everything. I mean everything from natural disease
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: pathology like we mentioned, to toxicology to even DNA and
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: you know, and even the greatest physicians that are out
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: there are not necessarily schooled in all of these areas.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: And much of the time it comes down to how
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: motivated the coroner is that is in office and how
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: many resources they have. And sadly, sadly, one of the
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: problems is is that for many coroners is that they're
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: not they have such a desire to serve their community
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: but yet they don't receive the appropriate amount of funding.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: The state might not provide the amount of training that
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: would bring them up to speed, say with their colleagues
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: that are a medical examiner's office, and they don't have
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the facilities. I've worked in, you know, with coroner's offices before,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: where I've worked in some of the most deplorable conditions
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: that you can imagine, and it's because there were no
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: resources existent. And I think a lot of it comes
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: down to many times politicians they don't want to think
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: about death. They don't want to sit around and talk
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: about death. But isn't it interesting that it's going to
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: impact everybody. It's going to touch everybody's life. No one else,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: they say, gets out alive, and it sooner or later,
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: as it all kind of spins around and life goes on,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: people are going to be impacted by the services of
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the corner And in my estimation, there is no greater
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: service than helping families that have lost a loved one.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: I've worked in both corners and medical examiners over the
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: course of my career, and the one commonality that I
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: have found is that in the offices I've worked in
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: that people always were striving for excellence. They wanted to
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: be there as medical legal death investigators. But the problem
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: is is that many times many of them like training
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and they don't necessarily have all the resources that other
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: people have. So you've explained to me what a corner is.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Of course, you know, I'm going to show my age
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: here and saying I used to watch Quincy all the time.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: It is my favorite show with Jack Klugman. So what
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: is the difference between a medical examiner and a corner. Well,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm glad that you mentioned the show Quincy.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: I get I get that comment a lot. Did you
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: know that corners out in and this is one of
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: the little interesting little factoids about corners in certain areas
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: of California. The corner and the sheriff. Listen to me
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: very carefully, The corner and the sheriff are one and
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: the same in the office. And there's a lot of
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: people that have a problem with that that they see
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: that as a conflict of interest between these two offices,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: and yet they will employ a medical examiner to actually
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: do the examinations. Now, it kind of makes your head
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: spin when you begin to think of it. There's actually,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: you know, Jackie. There's actually a couple of states out
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: there that where the coroner is also a prosecutor, which
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: I find fascinating. You can go down to Texas, they
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: don't have corners, and you go to the big cities,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: they'll have a medical examiner in cities, But do you
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: know who actually does the job of the corner in
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Texas and many of those counties, the justice of the peace.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: It's just one of these things that's all over the board.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: So when we begin to talk about medical examiners commonly
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: and not in every single case, I think that Michigan
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: is probably one of the best examples where you'll have
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: a physician that is not necessarily a pathologist or forensic pathologists,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: but they are a physician and they kind of handle
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: individual counties in that region. But by and large, when
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: you think about medical examiner, you think about this term
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: that people here in the media all the time, forensic pathologist.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: And to give you an example, for instance, if you're
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: going to be if you have kids that come to
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: me all the time at university and they say, I
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: want to be a forensic pathologist, I want to be
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: a medical examiner, and I explained to them what they
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: have to do, and this is what you have to do.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: This is the simple recipe. First off, you got to
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: go to medical school. Well how long is that, Well,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: that's four years after you graduate with your undergraduate degree.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: And then if you want to go into forensic pathology,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: first off you have to go through a pathology residency.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: That's five years, Jackie. So we're talking about right now
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: at this point, nine years after you graduated with your
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: undergraduate degree. And then if you make it through the
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: pathology residency, which is you know, all the stuff that
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: they do looking at tumors and then managing a lab
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: and all those sort of things in hospitals, then you
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: have to find what's referred to as a forensic pathology residency. Now,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: when I was working in Atlanta, we had a it's
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: actually a fellowship. We had a fellowship program there. You know,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: we only selected two people per year that would come
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: in and they were from all over the world. So
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: it's highly competitive to get one of these positions as
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: a as a forensic pathologist. And then you have to
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: make it through all of the training and it's very
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: very intensive. So you have all of these years of
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: training that an individual has to go through to become
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: a medical examiner. And then you compare that to what
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: many states use their system as a corner system where
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: they don't have a medical examiner. So you know, we
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: talk about the level or lack thereof, of education of
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: the resources that are made available to corners, and it's
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: a real head scratcher, isn't it. Because you can go
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: to a place like, say, for instance, I'll give you
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: a great example, a state of Oklahoma. State of Oklahoma
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: doesn't have corners. That's a statewide medical examiners system. Same
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: thing in New Mexico, statewide medical examiner system. You get
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: down to Florida, the state is broken into districts where
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: you have a district medical examiner for all these various
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: areas down in Florida. Virginia the same way. But you
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: go to New York and New York has still has
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: county corners in that area, but they have a state
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: medical examiner. It's very confusing. They have a state medical examiner,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: and then they have in of course New York City,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: they have the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. So
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: you get these amalgams that are thrown in on top
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: of it, and it leaves people sitting back, and no
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: wonder they get so confused because the media, I think
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: many times uses these terms interchangeably. I think you're right,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and I also think that you just gave me a
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: whole new respect for the people that I work with
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: day in and day out. I did not realize that
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: it was that intensive to become a forensic pathologist. Now,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: do you have to be certified to be a medical examiner? Well,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: that's going to be depended upon the state in order
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to become a medical examiner, or it's not necessarily termed
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: that way as a certification, it is. There is a
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: board certification. So let me kind of break it down
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: for you. First off, you have to be an MD. Okay,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: if we're going with a kind of a classic model here,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: you have to be an MD, a medical physician. Then
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: you have to be a pathologist, which means you have
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: to do that five year residency. Well, at the end
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: of that five year residency, these people have to go
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: through this just in intense board certification and they get
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: certified and what's referred to as anatomical pathology and then
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: clinical pathology, and then after that there's subdivisions. You can
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: go into blood banking. You can go into histopathology, or
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: you can go in to say, for instance, forensic pathology,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: and that's a one year fellowship. That's another three hundred
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and sixty five days of training you have to endure,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: and then you have to go through another test for that.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: And there are many people that go through all of
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: that training and they get to the forensic pathology training
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: and that might sit for those boards Jackie, if you
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: can imagine this. I've known of people that have sat
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: three and four times and they never pass it because
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: it's that intense. So you know when at the end
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: of the day, at the end of that process, you
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: really produce a high quality practitioner at the end. But
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: here's the downside. After you've gone through all of this training. Now,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: if you're working as a forensic pathologist, you're going to
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: go to work for the government, and you can imagine
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: that you're not going to get paid as well as
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: many of your colleagues say they just stopped with general pathology.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: And you're going to be undergoing the rigors of court.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: You're going to be doing autopsies day in and day out.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: You're going to have to see some of the most
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: horrible things that you can possibly imagine. And right now,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: there is a real desperate lack of board certified forensic
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: pathologists out there. I've I've actually talked to a couple
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: of people that always bring it to my attention, say,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: you know, there are more board certified neurosurgeons than there
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: are forensic pathologists in this country, and just kind of
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: wrap your mind around that just for a second, because
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: there's not a lot of people that go into the field,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: but yet there's such a need. You know, when you
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: think about, you know, the big cities that require this
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: constant tending to the dead, if you will, an examination
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: of these bodies. You go to places like New York
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: in LA and Detroit and Chicago and Miami and Atlanta,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: You've always got an influx of bodies that need to
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: be examined. They need to be examined by professionals. Well
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: what do you do if you're if you're in a
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: corner state and you don't have access to a forensic pathologist. Well,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: those bodies have to be transported to a location where
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: you can get access to somebody that can effectively do
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: an autopsy. And it creates a real, real problem. So
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: let's throw a monkey wrench in this, Joe. Where do
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: you come in in this hierarchy that's scene investigator? Well,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: you know people who have asked me that before, and
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: you know, they say, well, you say you work for
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: a corner you work for a medical exam er. Well, yeah,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm once referred to as a medico legal or
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: was was. I'm a college professor now, but you know
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: you I worked as a medico legal death investigator. And
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: essentially what that means is that just like homicide detectives
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: go out and they are the eyes and the ears
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: of the chief of police, or you can even extend
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: that to the prosecutor because they're looking to prosecute a
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: case of homicide, people like myself are the eyes and
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: the ears of the forensic pathologists in the field. So
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: you know, you see it on TV where you have
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: these doctors, you know, these forensic pathologists that go out
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: to these scenes and these dramas and all that stuff.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: There's not enough of them to do that, Jackie. It
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: just it doesn't happen. Now, I've been out on scenes
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: with forensic pathologists before. Trust me, it does happen every
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: now and then. But for the most part. Day in
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: and day out, it's going to be people like myself
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: that go out and they go and observe the bodies
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: at the scene. Remember, one of the most important parts
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: of death investigation is seeing the body in its natural,
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: pristine state, that place where you live, you and dwell,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: where you go about your business with your family, where
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: things happen to you in that environment. When you take
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: that body out of context and you don't go out
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: to the scene to examine the body, it can wind
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: up creating major problems. So for the medical legal people
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: like myself, the investigators, we go out take photos at
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the scene, just like the police do. We do our measurements,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: we do our examinations, and then we make a decision
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: at the scene as to whether or not we're going
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: to release the body from the scene to a funeral
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: home or if we're going to bring the body in
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: for further examination back at the county Mork And that's
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the longest sort of it. That's what we do. The
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: difference between a medical legal death investigator and say, for instance,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: a homicide investigator is that homicide investigator is specifically focused
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: on homicide. Well, homicides make up a very very small
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: percentage of the satality of all the deaths that occur.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: We still have to go out and examine examine natural deaths,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: and of course suicides and accents and all these things.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: But our working premise, and this is something that I
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: teach my students and always have and always will, is
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: that our working assumption is that every death, every death,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: is a homicide until we can prove otherwise. And the
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: reason we do that is because if you assume that
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: everything that you go out on is a homicide, that's
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the most intense investigation that you can conduct, and that
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: way that ensures that you're not going to miss anything.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: That you're going to assume that something nefarious has happened
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: to this individual, and then logically you begin to go
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: down your checklist and you're whittling things away until you
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: come to a conclusion that it's something other than homicide,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: for instance, and then you can move forward with the investigation.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: You can get medical records, or you can go back
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and get psychiatric records, for instance, if you're dealing with
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: a suicide, and it all fits into one gigantic piece,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: which should be a complete investigation relative to manner and
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: cause of Death. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: body Backs.