Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here. When a person dies violently
Speaker 1: or unusually, or in an untimely fashioned, difficult questions invariably follow.
Speaker 1: What happened? Could it have been prevented? Is foul play involved?
Speaker 1: Has a crime been committed? Should we be worried? Those
Speaker 1: are the questions that corners, medical examiners, and forensic pathologists
Speaker 1: wrangle with every day. They are the ones who have
Speaker 1: to find answers for the living. We spoke with Gary
Speaker 1: Watts the Corner in Richland County, South Carolina. He said, morally,
Speaker 1: I think we can be judged as a civilization on
Speaker 1: how we treat those that are dead. We talked about
Speaker 1: it all the time. I don't care for dealing with
Speaker 1: somebody that was found under a bridge or was found
Speaker 1: in a five million dollar house. We're going to treat
Speaker 1: them with respect and dignity. We're going to take care
Speaker 1: of their families in carrying out their duties. Though many
Speaker 1: of America's death investigators, stile, medical examiners and corners, whose
Speaker 1: work is supported by taxpayers, are hampered by a lack
Speaker 1: of manpower, chronic underfunding, and a general public coolness toward
Speaker 1: their work, whether people want to face it or not.
Speaker 1: Though these jobs are critically important, death investigators not only
Speaker 1: uncover possible foul play, but they can spot infectious diseases
Speaker 1: and are among the first to identify epidemics and other
Speaker 1: public health concerns. So what's the difference between a medical
Speaker 1: examiner and a corner. Lots of people use those titles interchangeably,
Speaker 1: but they're not the same. Here's the explanation from a
Speaker 1: two thousand three workshop held by the U S Institute
Speaker 1: of Medicine now called the National Academy of Medicine. Quote.
Speaker 1: The major differences between corners and medical examiners are embedded
Speaker 1: in the manner of their selection by electoral process versus appointment,
Speaker 1: and their professional status. Corners are elected lay people who
Speaker 1: often do not have professional training, whereas medical examiners are
Speaker 1: appointed and have board certification in a medical specialty. Lot's explained.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have the misconception from
Speaker 1: a death investigative standpoint, that it has to be one
Speaker 1: or the other. My opinion has always been that it
Speaker 1: needs to be professionally trained death investigators, regardless of what
Speaker 1: type of system you work whether it's a corner system
Speaker 1: or a medical examiner system. What's forty year career as
Speaker 1: a corner includes time as a police officer and an
Speaker 1: emergency medical technician. Like some jurisdictions throughout the US, but
Speaker 1: not all, the Richland County Coroner's Office uses medical examiners. Again,
Speaker 1: they're normally physicians to actually conduct autopsies. Deputy corners do
Speaker 1: the fieldwork, including investigating the death scene, tracking down medical records,
Speaker 1: and interviewing witnesses. What said, we rely on the medical
Speaker 1: exam or the forensic pathologist to give us the medical
Speaker 1: reason the person dies. They determine the cause of death
Speaker 1: from a medical standpoint. Corners determined the manner of death
Speaker 1: through an investigative process. Take for example, a gunshot victim
Speaker 1: is a homicide, a suicide, an accident? Can it be determined?
Speaker 1: What said? You cannot necessarily make that determination just from
Speaker 1: the autopsy process. You have to have skilled investigators in
Speaker 1: the field, death investigators to help with that process to
Speaker 1: make sure that you come up not only with the
Speaker 1: proper cause of death, but also the proper manner of death.
Speaker 1: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, states
Speaker 1: have a myriad of different systems to conduct death investigations.
Speaker 1: Some states use a centralized medical examiner system, some are
Speaker 1: county or district based, and some mixing corners in varying ways.
Speaker 1: States have differing definitions of what a coroner or a
Speaker 1: medical examiner is. Too. Medical examiner in West Virginia, for example,
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a physician. In Georgia, someone can
Speaker 1: be both the mayor and the corner if they live
Speaker 1: in a town a fewer than five thousand people. In Nebraska,
Speaker 1: the county attorney does the job of the corner and
Speaker 1: in Texas, justices of the Peace handle corner duties. States
Speaker 1: also have different requirements on what triggers an autopsy or
Speaker 1: death investigation. All of it makes for confusing and sometimes
Speaker 1: slipshod way that death is handled throughout the nation, From
Speaker 1: one district to another. The authorities handling these issues may
Speaker 1: have vastly differing competency and resources. What's common, it seems,
Speaker 1: is this funding is a problem almost everywhere, and largely
Speaker 1: because of that, it's extremely difficult to find qualified medical
Speaker 1: examiners or forensic pathologists who can make good money outside
Speaker 1: of government work, and it's becoming harder to pay qualified
Speaker 1: people who know their way around the field. A report
Speaker 1: by the Scientific Working Group on Medical Legal Death Investigation
Speaker 1: cited a number of reasons for the shortage of forensic pathologists.
Speaker 1: Some estimate that fewer than five hundred are practicing in
Speaker 1: the US. Among the reasons a lack of educational centers
Speaker 1: that teach the profession, lacks funding to support that education,
Speaker 1: high dropout rates, tight budgets among states and counties, and
Speaker 1: the resultant low salaries the deter young people who may
Speaker 1: want to enter the field. That shortage may be causing
Speaker 1: some disturbing problems. A the eleven investigation by NPR, PBS,
Speaker 1: and Pro Publica found jurisdictions that were cutting back on
Speaker 1: autopsies when the cause of death seemed obvious. Craig Harvey,
Speaker 1: a death investigator with the Los Angeles County Corners Office
Speaker 1: now retired, told NPR at that time, there's no way
Speaker 1: that we can look at every case we should probably
Speaker 1: be looking at. When you only see one in every
Speaker 1: three cases, the possibility that homicide is going to be
Speaker 1: missed are pretty great. For Watts, who has been involved
Speaker 1: with more than thirty death investigations in his career, The
Speaker 1: Systemic problems always come back to money. If states don't
Speaker 1: cough up enough to pay the right kind of experts,
Speaker 1: the problems will persist, he said. The death investigation offices
Speaker 1: are usually the last ones to get funding. It's something
Speaker 1: that people either don't want to think about, try not
Speaker 1: to think about, or won't think about until it affects
Speaker 1: them personally, and then everyone wants to know all the
Speaker 1: answers and exactly what happened. Today's episode written by John
Speaker 1: Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang with kind assistants from
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.
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