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Excerpt
Although the authors should be commended for bringing attention to this problem, they both failed to emphasize the influence of politics and money on the workings of medical examiner systems. Death investigators and medical examiners are at the interface of law, politics, and medicine. Money, power, and professional egos are at the root of these overlapping disciplines. In reality, physicians and forensic scientists work for lawyers and the courts, who control the purse strings of criminal investigations. The legal community either accepts or rejects the scientific information collected by death investigators. Attorneys are trained to be advocates for their clients and win their cases. If lawyers were interested in scientific truth, they would demand that the standards for death investigation be upgraded. Medical and law school curricula have shown little interest in the forensic sciences. Most forensic pathology residencies still emphasize the importance of autopsy pathology over scene investigation and courtroom testimony. In these times of fiscal restraint, medical examiners have seen their budgets slashed, making them unable to attract and hire properly trained personnel to conduct death investigations.
Medical examiners have also been pitted against funeral directors who have a financial incentive to satisfy grieving families by opposing autopsies and quickly embalming and burying the dead. Beginning in the 1950s, medical examiners' offices replaced antiquated and politically corrupt coroner systems. However, funeral director-coroners still control death investigations in many rural communities where forensic expertise is lacking. These communities offer minimal financial incentives to attract forensic experts to work in these underserved areas. Thus death investigation suffers.
From a politician's point of view, a dead person represents merely one less voter and one less taxpayer. Many politicians concern themselves with death investigations when they involve their own family members, prominent persons in their community, or when the investigation is so botched that the system has to be changed. Greedy funeral director-coroners and corrupt politicians lack the insight to incorporate the advances of forensic science into death investigations. This results in travesties of justice and waste of taxpayers' monies. The public must become educated to the importance of death investigation so that they can exercise their voting power to improve the system at election time. Medical examiners must continue to show greater interest in the investigative aspects of death.
