Death In Forensic Pathology

Preautopsy conference is an important part of the postmortem autopsy. This conference include: the crime scene investigator, the criminalists who were at the scene and analyze the evidence from the autopsy, the lead investigator, and the autopsy pathologist. The preautopsy conference should be planned early of the autopsy. They have meetings to develop a well planned approach to the autopsy. Each member of the team will know what type of information each one will need in order to facilitate the autopsy.

A death certificate is one of the most important documents you may ever need to obtain. Within the United States, it is the document used to stop social security payments or benefits of the deceased. It is also used by families who need to settle affairs regarding an estate. In the international world, the death certificate is used for inheritance issues, visas and marriage licenses when a parent or former spouse has died, or to transport a casket or urn.

Have certain interrogatories popped in your head repeatedly? How do we know if someone hears us beyond the grave? Can they determine if I died of natural causes or did someone cut my life thread short? Never really  thought about it have you? Well, if you did or not the answer is yes people!!! There are people who are adamant about understanding what caused our life to take a quick or long turn to the big paradise in the sky or the land of milk and honey as most people heard and proffered. They are the superheroes, advocates for the dead, Forensic Pathologist is the name. They hold the most important jobs in the world, because like I said before they are insistant with knowing what or whom triggered your expiration date?  Ha just a little humor for my comedy readers, yes you may have heard or be familiar of this occupation on Law and Order, Law and Order Criminal Intent, Law and Order SVU, CSI, etc.

On Tuesday, fans said goodbye to “Bones.” Twelve seasons, two hundred forty-six episodes, and numerous crimes solved, I had to say goodbye to not only my favorite TV series but a huge part of my life.

The time of death of a person is both legally and medically important in different aspects most people don't know that there are actually three different times of death. Physiological time of death: The point at which the deceased's body - including vital organs - ceased to function. Estimated time of death: A best guess based on available information and legal time of death: The time at which the body was discovered or physically pronounced dead by another individual. This is the time that is shown - by law - on a death certificate. One method of estimating the time of death is to measure body temperature. The normal equation for this is: 37.5oC - 1.5 oC. The most common way of taking the temperature of the deceased is to use a rectal thermometer or to take a

An autopsy is an examination of the body after death. It usually consists of an external and an internal examination of the body. The external examination also documents identifying features such as scars, tattoos or other markings which may assist in the identification of the body. The internal examination looks at the internal organs to document any natural disease processes and/or injury .Its purpose is to learn the truth about the persons health during life and how the person really died, These situations include, violent deaths such as homicides, accidents, and suicides. Other categories are suspicious deaths, sudden and expected deaths, deaths in children and infants, prisoners, persons under the care of an institution,

Alan who was a normal hiker with his dog discovered a dead body behind the bushes while they were hiking. Alan immediately called the police and reported the crime. When the police go there they ask Alan questions about the dead body and said if there was anymore information that they would contact him. The forensic report was revealed and it showed that the dead body was Justin Parker, a 26-year-old, he had blood on his shirt, shoes and parts of the victim. The forensic report also found bruising on the ventral abdominal surface and legs. Finally, the report stated that there was exposed areas of skin had fly eggs and maggots. After the report, Justin immediate family, friends, and associates were contacted. Justin mom, boss, ex-girlfriend,

Forensic science consists of a variety of fields such as in this case Forensic Pathology, Toxicology, and Biology were used to help solve the murder. Forensic Pathology was used to determine the cause of death by conducting an autopsy on the Johnson body. Coming to a conclusion, that Denise Johnson’s cause of death was due to asphyxiation (also known as strangulation)2,9. The pathology unit also determined that her death was a forced and violent death. Given the facts of how the victim died it provides the officers with an idea on how the murder was committed. Secondly Forensic toxicology is the use of toxicology, pharmacology, clinical chemistry and analytical chemistry to help legal and medical investigation of poisoning, death, and drug use. A drug test was conducted on Johnson’s body in order to evaluate the type and amount of illegal or legal drugs that were taken. A drug test can normally detect all prescription drugs, and as well as alcohol and illegal drugs such as, cocaine, heroin, morphine, codeine, antidepressants and phencyclidine. According to Johnson’s toxicology reports, the only drug found in her body was heroine9. Lastly to have a better understanding of the case, it was important to know what had happened to Denise. Therefore the forensic biology unit conducted a rap kit to determine if Johnson was sexually assaulted. The forensic biology division is responsible for applying their biology knowledge to the law enforcement, which also includes forensic

Manners of death are the ways of an individual, or a group of people died at a certain location in which law enforcement have to categorize the individual’s or a group’s death. The certain locations can assist law enforcement to determine and eliminate the possibilities of how a person died. There are four manners of death that each have their own category: natural, accident, suicide, and homicide. Each manner illustrates how a person or a group were killed; for example, drug overdose, car incident, building on fire, etc. Sometimes it’s difficult to determine the manner of death of the deceased due to certain factors; if law enforcement confirmed that the person died of a drug overdose, then the next step is if it was an accident, suicide,

In 1836 coroners were given the power to order a doctor to perform an autopsy. The Coroner Society was created in 1846. Then the Coroner’s Act of 1887 removed the function of protecting financial interests of the crown, and increased interest in public health and the request for death statistics drove the creation of the role of coroner to death investigator.

There are many things that go towards the crime scene, and one of the most important steps is forensic pathology. Forensic pathology is when a medical examiner focuses on determining on how the victim had died. Sherlock Holmes was almost a platform for pathology, because of Sherlock bringing up the idea of testing blood. Pathology is important to every crime scene because it can show you trace evidence, blood analysis, and DNA left behind. Overall pathology is a very large part of finding answers to almost any crime scene.

At the autopsy, samples are taken of body fluids such as blood, urine and the fluid that surrounds the brain. Again, this is principally designed to establish a time of death; claims have been made that changes in the chemical construction of these fluids can be used to measure the time since death, but as the rate of changes depends upon body temperature they have not been established. Moreover, the cause of death (whether natural or unnatural) and physical or emotional stress can effect the rate of change too. There is one bodily fluid that can give an indication of the time of death of a fairly recent victim: the vitreous humour, the jelly-like interior of the eye. After death, the potassium content of this fluid increases steadily over four or five days.

Anthropology is the study of humans and the characteristics of them. Anthropologist study many things that make humans, human. These things include teeth, tissues, bones, the skeletal system, and the cause of death in certain situations. Forensic anthropology is the study of human skeletal remains. Anthropologist determine the cause of death, the remains, and where the bones or remains come from. There are differences in female and male skeletal materials, and sometimes population and age can have an effect on determining the sex.

To the vendors point does percent necrosis really matter? If the block has a decent amount of the appropriate tissue or tumor then it should be acceptable for the project. We could have the pathologists mark the necrosis on the H+Es while reading during QA and then cut those portions out of the block at a later point in time. The focus of the QA process should be on getting the right tissue and tumor type needed for the study. That is the main problem the new QA process was to solve.

After a traumatic death, the most common request to aid in determining the cause of death is a forensic autopsy; which is at the request of a family member or a prosecutor. Forensic autopsy includes: dissection of the anatomical body, toxicology, histology, DNA analysis, microbiology, biochemistry, evidence collection, photography, and dentistry (O’Donnell & Woodford, 2008). Certain religion beliefs will not allow a medical examiner to perform an invasive autopsy, in such cases, post mortem radiography is an alternative method in determining cause of death. Post mortem radiography includes post mortem computed tomography (PMCT) and post mortem magnetic reasoning imaging (PMMR). PMCT and PMMR display cross sectional images of the body that