Overview of Medico-legal Investigative Systems

Medico-legal Investigative Systems

The system for conducting medico-legal death investigations is in charge of confirming the reason and manner of unforeseen and inexplicable deaths. Homicides, suicides, unintentional injuries, drug-related deaths, and other sudden or unexpected deaths are examples of unnatural and unexplained deaths.

Major Duties of Medico-legal System:

• To gather evidence from the body that can be used to show or refute an individual's guilt or innocence and to confirm or deny the story of how the death occurred. To determine the cause and manner of death.
•  To identify the deceased if unknown.
• To determine or rule out further contributing or causing causes to the death, as well as to document any injuries or lack thereof, ascertain how the injuries happened, document any natural diseases present, and, if the case proceeds to trial, offer expert testimony.

The following categories typically describe deaths that are brought to the attention of the medical examiner's office or the coroner: violent deaths (accidents, suicides, and homicides), suspicious deaths, sudden and unexpected deaths, deaths without a physician in attendance, and deaths in institutions. Depending on the local jurisdiction, these groups can take different forms.

The Meaning of Death What was once not a problem—the definition of death—has now become one due to developments in medical research. The irreversible cessation of cardiac and/or respiratory function was once the definition of death. Today, equipment can keep a person's heart beating and breathing even though, if this equipment were switched off, heart and respiratory activity would stop. The medico-legal system mainly finds the declaration of a person as brain dead, with all the necessary conditions met, to be of academic interest because a case is not recorded until a physician has declared the person dead. The only situations in which this can be problematic are when organs are harvested and brain dead people are moved. Therefore, if organ harvesting is intended and family consent has been acquired, prior to the removal of the organs, authorization must also be obtained from the medical examiner or coroner if the case is to be a coroner's or medical examiner's case. This is due to the fact that once a person is deemed "dead," their case becomes a medico-legal one.

Coroner systems and medical examiner systems are the two main categories of medicolegal investigative systems in the US.

The Coroner System:

Twelve states had coroner systems as of 2000; nineteen had state medical examiner systems; some had county or regional medical examiner's offices but no coroner's offices; and sixteen had a combination of the two. The number of coroner systems has gradually decreased over time as medical examiner systems have taken their place, however this trend appears to have slowed recently. However, a sizable chunk of the American population's medical and legal coverage continues to be provided by coroner systems. The older of the two medicolegal systems is the coroner system, which dates back to feudal England. The Articles of Eyre include the oldest mention (1194).

The Medical Examiner System

In Massachusetts in 1877, the medical examiner system was first used in the United States. A physician who served as a "medical examiner" to ascertain the cause and method of death was designated for each of the state's many sectors, which were divided into smaller groups. The authority to request autopsies was not previously granted to medical examiners. It wasn't until the 1940s that this was fixed. Both instances lacked a central laboratory for toxicological testing. In Massachusetts, a real State Medical Examiner System didn't emerge until the 1980s. In New York City, the first real medical examiner system was established in 1918.

Journal of Forensic Pathology

Journal of Forensic Pathology is an open access peer review journal with a distinguished editorial board, offers authors the chance to publish their work as a review article, research article, case report, short communication, or commentary. The articles are being prepared for peer review, where the subject matter experts offer their advice to the author in the form of review comments in order to raise the article's caliber and standard, increasing its likelihood of achieving a high impact factor. The Journal of Forensic Pathology will support authors by posting the published version of articles by NIH grant-holders and European or UK-based biomedical or life sciences grant holders to PubMed Central immediately after publication. The Journal of Forensic Pathology follows a progressive editorial policy that encourages researchers to submit the original research, reviews and editorial observations as  articles, well supported by tables and graphic representation.

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Journal Highlights

• rape Investigation
• Blood Sampling
• Criminalistics
• Digital Forensics
• DNA Fingerprinting
• Forensic Autopsy
• Forensic Evidence
• Forensic Genetics

Journal metrics

• ISSN No: 2684-1312
• Average acceptance to publication time (5-7 days)
• Average article processing time (30-45 days)