Medical Examiners

This past week I spent time with a group called Citizens Against Homicide. They help the families of homicide victims with many different issues. Coping with the police investigations, when there's an arrest educating the families on the whole court procedure and all the delays, working with families trying to keep the guilty person from getting out on parole, and much, much more.

They also talked about medical examiners how have no idea what they are doing. One of the biggest problems is calling a death either natural causes when it's a homicide, or calling a homicide a suicide. Here are two glaring examples:

One person who supposedly died of natural causes as determined by the medical examiner was sent to the mortuary. There the mortician discovered two bullet holes in the skull. Guess what? The crime scene was contaminated and so was the body. The person who probably committed the murder told the medical examiner that the person had a heart condition and had a heart attack. The medical examiner put that down as cause of death!

A victim with 24 stab wounds including some in his back and his buttocks was declared a suicide. No note, not nothing. How could something like this happen?

Obviously there are some incompetent medical examiners out there. It isn't like we see in the movies and on TV.

What I learned from the members of Citizens Against Homicide is that there is much, much more that goes on even after the murdered is caught and convicted.

Marilyn