Quote:
Originally Posted by JayTeeMe
I guess I don't understand the Russian roulette thing suicide or not in the first place. I would think from the evidence available to you all you should be able to say is that he died from a gunshot wound to the head. The hard findings stop there and then it's just speculation, which seems like very poor science.
A roommate's coworker hit and killed a pedestrian. The medical examiner ruled it a suicide which seems strange to me. From his examination shouldn't he just be able to tell that the guy died from being hit by a car (or even less, from massive traumatic injuries to X, Y, and Z)? How on earth could that medical examiner look at the dead body and know if it was a suicide, homicide, or accident?
I agree completely. Manners of death were very important as our field developed in the 20th century. There were unrecognized homicides, many in children, and unsophisticated death investigation as far as forensic investigation.
The manner of death, as far a a doctor being able to determine it, are out-moded, but many of my colleagues say we should be the determining agent, because we are the ones trained to do it.
to summarize, The manner of death is not the cause of death. It takes in consideration the investigation of the circumstances of death and I use that information to make my decsion. If the investigation agency says the guy wrote a suicide note, or told someone he was going to step into traffic and did, I rule it suicide. I take their information at face value unless there is something inconsistent with my findings and their investigation. I don't investigate myself.
As an example of how variable the system is. A NYC ME recently presented a talk on why they rule "suicide by cop" as suicides. They die by gunfire at the hands of others, but it goes down as suicide. I actually understand the logic, but I think all it does is show how inadequate ruling of manner is in complex cases. With that said, it is straight forward in over 90% of the cases.
Here are some scenarios to think about;
A linebacker just before the play looks at the tight end and thinks to himself, I going to kill that guy, he blind sides him, his neck is broken and he dies a year later from pneumonia. The linebacker never tells anyone what he was thinking. Homicide, accident, or natural?
A boxer dies in the ring. Accident or homicide.
A guy drives off the road into a lake, doesn't try to get out of the car. On purpose, suicide? Did someone run him off the road, homicide? Was he having a heart attack,natural, I can figure that out. Or was he drunk and it was an accident, I can figure that out halfway, and have to depend on other people to give me the information that it was accidental.
Someone hits a person with a car. How finds out if she actually did it on purpose or not? Not me.
I told a prosecutor that we rule judicial executions as homicides, she looked at me and said, "no its not". I told her my four choices and asked her which fit better.
Manners of death are medical descriptions of the circumstances of death. Homicide does not denote a crime. But their is a lot of misunderstanding about it, by the lay public and judicial system. I've had prosecutors worry that they can't charge a person with vehicular homicide because I ruled the death an accident.
So I don't like the present system, their is way too much misunderstanding that the medical manner of death has some sort of legal weight, and its just not robust enough to classify all the weird ways people have found to get on my exam table.