This duty is often formalized and made part of a contract of service for those forensic medicine experts who are either full-time or substantially involved in assisting the police, in England and Wales, the 'Home Office Pathologists' are permanently on call for such visits and in many other jurisdictions, such as the medical examiner systems in the USA, and the European State and University Institutes of Forensic Medicine, there is usually a prearranged duty roster for attendance at scenes of death ( Saukko & Knight, 2004). Local practice varies but any doctor claiming to be a forensic medicine expert should always make himself available to accompany the police to the locus of the death.
In homicide, suspected homicide, and other suspicious or obscure cases, the forensic medicine expert should visit the scene of the death before the body is removed. And this interest goes beyond simple curiosity ( Wagner, 2009). In a culture that values life, explaining the death in a public forum (the meaning of “forensic”) is crucial for many reasons. A common question asked is, “Why does it matter? The person is dead.” While it is true that the dead cannot benefit, the value in death investigation is to benefit the living and future generations. ( Spitz, 2006).Īlthough the primary goal of a death investigation is to establish the cause and manner of death, the role of the death investigation extends much further than simply answering these two questions. The English coroner system was mentioned in documentations around the 12th century B.C. The association of law and medicine dates back to the Egyptian culture as early as 3000 B.C. Death investigation has been performed for centuries in all societies, although not always by medical professionals ( Committee, 2003). The key goal is to provide objective evidence of cause, timing, and manner of death for adjudication by the criminal justice system. It begins with body examination and evidence collection at the scene and proceeds through history, physical examination, laboratory tests, and diagnosis – in short, the broad ingredients of a doctor’s treatment of a living patient. Medical expertise is crucial in death investigations.
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