Do police really have to attend the autopsy of victims of crime, or is that only in books and movies?
Seems like it would be a better use of their time to go out and interview people and track leads to solve the crime.
They are there to collect evidence. For instance, a bullet is removed. It is handed to the police who log it and bag it and send it off to the lab. That bullet has a paper trail that may become important in the prosecution of the case.
Since medical examiners are part of the criminal justice system, they are responsible for evidence until it is passed to the next link in the chain.
An officer does eventually have to get the bullet by signing for it, with whoever collected it, but, he doesn’t have to be at the autopsy to collect it.
depends on the jurisdiction. There are some jurisidictions with coroners, rather than medical examiners, and the coroners are not part of the LEO system - they’re independent judicial officers. So in that case, the doctor performing the autopsy would not be LEO, so it may be necessary to have an officer present.
We go to autopsies. Take our own pictures for evidence. Common procedure. But of course things change from place to place.
There is more than one cop.
How do you think police find people to interview and leads to track?
There is no overarching “have to”, as in a law compelling something, in much if any of these kind of things. It’s more about local policy, which is in large measure driven by how much CYA a given agency wants to build into their policies. It varies a lot by location.
Another big reason, however, for LE to attend an autopsy is so they can get important pieces of info more quickly. Say, for example, how many times was a person shot or stabbed. Were all the bullets the same caliber, or different, meaning the possiblity of more then one shooter? Might the decedent have been beaten up prior to being killed? Etc. this can directly and immediately influence the investigation and other aspects of the case (eg. if someone is already in custody, being able to numerate the number of stab wounds can influence things like how much to set bail, and so forth).
as an aside, vanishingly few - if any - medical examiners are actual LEOs (law enforcement officers?). the vast majority - if not all - of ME offices are jurisdictionally and functionally independent from the police or prosecutors offices. At least in the US. More likely that a coroners office will be integreated with LE or PA, as with the merged coroner/prosecutor positions in some jurisdicitons. Again, however, all this varies greatly from place to place. Most people are in fact very surprized to learn just how much variation there is, both in the “official” organization of things as well as local policies and practices.
Many jurisdictions don’t have coroners or medical examiners. They have doctors on call to certify death, but those are generally deaths by natural causes that were unattended. Outside of big cities, there aren’t enough murder cases to make it worthwhile to have a full-time medical examiner. Autopsies aren’t required if the cause of death is clear.
If there is a suspected murder, the police call upon a the ME from another jurisdiction for an autopsy.
Surely the police don’t have to attend every autopsy, or even every autopsy of a murder victim. There must be cases where the autopsy reveals a previously unsuspected murder, and I can’t believe that the evidence is invalidated because a cop was not there in person to collect and document it.
I suspect prosecutors would prefer testimony or evidence collected by an experienced homicide detective over an independent ME. I’m recalling an early proceeding in the OJ case where the ME was ridiculed for not following up on the evidence as if he were a detective. On the other hand, defense attorneys must love the MEs who like to play Sherlock Holmes and make up theories of the crime based on the minimal evidence they collect (this is in reference to a few celebrity MEs).
A bit of a tangent here:
In all the TV shows in which an autopsy is performed, they show various organs being removed and weighed.
Assuming TV reflects reality, why do they do this?
Surely the size of organs will vary greatly according to the body size of the individual, so the actual weight of the organ should have no specific pathological significance.
Similarly, if the organ did have some pathological condition, this would be visually obvious and the weight would be immaterial, beyond that variation caused by the observable pathology.
So what’s the story here?
Do coronors ever really eat sandwiches and crack wise while performing the autopsies like they do in movies and TV shows?
In many cases, a murder isn’t a murder until the ME/coroner says so. In an autopsy I participated in as a college student working in pathology at a hospital, the teenage subject was determined to have died from “GSW (shotgun) to the chest” (surprise!). It was only after that declaration that the LE investigation was officially declared a homicide case. Hell, the kid could have shot himself in the chest with a 12ga., then ran and hid the weapon, cleaned his blood trail, and THEN bled out… or something.
I would be very surprized if there is a jurisdiction that does not at least have a coroner. While I don’t know the laws of every state, every state law I am familiar with stipuates that only a medical examiner or coroner can certify a death that is due to non-natural causes (that is, with a manner of death other than natural). That includes not just so-called “murders”, but also suicides and accidents.
It is true that many jurisdicitons do not have medical examiners. Population-wise, about half of the US is covered by medical examiners, and half by coroners, nothwithstanding hybrid systems that somehow incorporate both. again, much variation. Geographically, much more territory is covered by coroners, as, as alluded to, there is a trend towards medical examiners rather than coroners in areas with more concentrated population. Exceptions here too though - New Mexico, very sparse population, is covered by an ME; Indianapolis in Marion County has a coroner.
However, as I said earlier, people are often surprized by how much variation there is. That includes me, even though due to my job I’m fairly eduated on the topic.
As far as why organs are weighed, it does have pathological significance. Just one example - chronic high blood pressure causes the heart to enlarge, and enlarged hearts are more prone to arrhythmias, which can be a cause of sudden unexpected death. A key parameter documenting that enlargement is the heart weight.
And the question about wisecracking sandwich chomping coroners doing autopsies - Absolutely NO! They don’t exist. Not because they wouldn’t crack wise and eat sandwiches while doing autopsies if they could – I’m sure they would. But coroners DO NOT do autopsies.