Medical Examiners in north carolina
Medical examiners are crucial members of an investigative team. Their job is to visit crime scenes and perform autopsies to determine cause of deaths.
Deaths Requiring Medical Examiners
Responsibilities of Medical Examiners
When Autopsies Should be Performed
Medical Examiners are Unnecessary for
Deaths Requiring Medical Examiners
- Homicide
- Suicide
- Accident
- Trauma
- Disaster
- Violence
- Unknown, unnatural or suspicious circumstances
- In police custody, jail or prison
- In state-operated mental health facilities
- Poisoning or suspicion of poisoning
- Public health hazard (such as acute contagious disease or epidemic)
- Deaths during surgical or anesthetic procedures
- Sudden unexpected deaths not reasonably related to known previous disease
- Deaths without medical attendance
Responsibilities of Medical Examiners
- Inspect every dead body that is in their jurisdiction
- Search the scene of the crime for evidence helpful for determining the cause of death
- The body must be examined thoroughly for evidence of the cause of death
- Obtain blood for toxicology
- Perform autopsies
- Obtain a medical and social history of the deceased
- Determine whether death is natural, accidental, or intentional
- Fill out a Report of Investigation and autopsy report
- Complete a Medical Examiner Certificate of Death
When Autopsies Should be Performed
- all homicides and suspected homicides
- suspected drug related deaths, illicit or prescription
- hit and run accidents
- victims alleged to have been lying in the roadway or on railroad tracks before being struck
- pilots and crew in aircraft crashes, private and commercial
- sudden unexpected deaths where the decedent does not have a well-documented illness that would explain death (All such deaths in young adults, children, and infants, including SIDS cases. Deaths in the elderly should be considered on a case by case basis.)
- suspicious or contested suicides
- accidental deaths where the observable injuries do not appear sufficient to explain death or seem inconsistent with the alleged "accident"
- possible public health hazard when the autopsy is the most expeditious means of determining whether in fact a hazard exists
- law enforcement insistence
- badly burned bodies
- badly disfigured bodies when identification may be an issue, especially if there are multiple fatalities
- skeletonized remains
- badly decomposed remains
- any death where there is a reasonable suspicion that trauma may have been the cause or a contributing cause and an autopsy will settle the issue.
- natural deaths in known alcoholics and drug abusers
- deaths of travelers, vacationers, convention attendees, workers, students, and other strangers from other countries unless determined unnecessary
Medical Examiners are Unnecessary for
- deaths that are already medical examiner cases
- occur in a licensed hospital or nursing home
- under the care of a licensed hospice
- an infant less than 24 hours old
- where the body is being donated to the Commission of Anatomy or a medical school
For Basic Steps into becoming a Medical Examiner click here