Coroners
Coroners are officials tasked with investigating deaths that appear violent, uncertain, or suspicious. Their primary role involves determining the manner of death—whether it was accidental, suicidal, homicidal, natural, or undetermined. Coroners may conduct inquests, order autopsies, and gather evidence without needing consent from the deceased's family, which is crucial in understanding the circumstances surrounding a death. While coroners can be elected officials, they often include individuals with backgrounds in medicine or law enforcement, such as morticians or doctors. Their responsibilities extend beyond investigations to include signing death certificates and notifying relevant authorities, particularly when autopsies are required by law.
Historically, the role of the coroner has evolved since its inception in medieval England, where they initially focused on tax collection related to capital offenses. In the United States, the coroner system has been adapted, with a distinction between elected coroners and appointed medical examiners. Modern coroners play a vital role in medicolegal investigations and may sometimes gain public recognition for their high-profile cases. Overall, coroners serve a significant function in ensuring justice and public safety, contributing to the broader understanding of death within society.
Subject Terms
Coroners
SIGNIFICANCE: A coroner is the officer responsible for finding out how a person died if that death appears to have been violent. The coroner may hold an inquest and order an autopsy to be performed if the manner of death is not obvious.
When a person dies and the manner of death is deemed either uncertain or violent, it is the coroner’s job to investigate the death. A coroner is called to the scene of a crime to determine whether a death occurred by accidental, suicidal, homicidal, natural, or uncertain means. Even if law-enforcement officials feel that there already exists enough evidence to proceed with a criminal investigation, they still must wait for the coroner’s decision before they act. The coroner may order an autopsy and wait until its completion before making a final decision on the manner of death.
Coroners can be elected officials who do not necessarily possess any medical or law-enforcement knowledge. Usually, though, the coroner is a mortician, doctor, or other local law-enforcement official. In big metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, a coroner’s position is a full-time job and is assisted by deputies who do the fieldwork.
Responsibilities
A coroner’s responsibilities are many, including the primary one of determining whether or not enough evidence accompanies a death to justify a criminal investigation. A coroner may investigate against the will of the deceased’s relatives or hospital employees; conversely, a coroner may declare the matter closed, stating there should not be an investigation at all. Coroners are also responsible for notifying the proper authorities regarding deaths and signing death certificates. A human body must be certified as legally dead before any funeral arrangements are made. If the body is eventually going to be cremated, an autopsy may be mandatory according to regional laws.
If the cause of death is not obvious at the crime scene, the coroner will usually hold an inquest and order an autopsy. For medicolegal or forensic investigations, a coroner does not have to get permission from the deceased’s next of kin in order for an autopsy to be performed. The coroner will usually order a full autopsy, so as much information can be gathered as possible. The results of the autopsy will determine whether law-enforcement agencies should continue with their own investigations.
Everybody is under the jurisdiction of the coroner, from the pathologists or medical examiners who perform the autopsy to the laboratory technicians who run further tests on dissected organs (such as toxicology). The coroner can issue arrest warrants and subpoenas as needed if investigations warrant it; in some counties the coroner is legally more powerful than the sheriff. The coroner also identifies remains, testifies regarding insurance and estate claims, and warns the community about dangerous new illegal drugs as they are discovered.
History
Throughout history, there have been coroners or people like them whose job it was to say whether someone’s death was intentional or not. The English were the first to establish a coroner’s office: In 1194, as a way to raise ransom funds for King Richard I, knights in each county were given the task of selling the goods of hanged felons. These knights were known as “crowners,” a word that eventually became “coroner” (taken from corona, a Latin word for “crown”).
Eventually the coroner’s job became that of ensuring all taxes were collected honestly by the sheriff. This meant that all deaths of a sudden or violent nature were investigated. Matters became complicated when suicide was concerned. The laws of medieval England stated that all possessions belonging to someone who committed suicide become the property of the Crown. The Church of England added that the suicide victim’s soul was condemned to hell unless the victim had suffered from demoniac possession or insanity. This the coroner had to determine, and the first inquests were held.
The first written work about forensic medicine was Sung Tz’u’s Hsi Yuan Chi Lu (washing away of unjust imputations or wrongs), written in 1247. The first university department of legal medicine opened at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1807, and in England, coroners became officials who dealt with deaths that were suspicious. The United States adopted the British coroner system but eventually began to change how it worked by using professionally trained physicians who had studied forensic pathology.
The Coroner in the United States
In the United States, a coroner was either elected or appointed to the job until 1877. In that year, a physician in Massachusetts was chosen instead to be the coroner. The job’s description changed, also, so that coroners were only supposed to investigate violent deaths. In 1915, New York became the first city to give a coroner the authority to order an autopsy, and Maryland began a statewide medical examiner system in 1939. The different between coroners and medical examiners is that coroners are elected county officials while medical examiners are appointed. As of 2024, twenty-three US states had counties served by a medical examiner system, twenty states had a coroner system, and six used other county officials to perform examinations.
Modern coroners are not only invaluable assets to medicolegal investigations, but they can also become celebrities in their own rights. Thomas Noguchi, Los Angeles County’s chief coroner from 1967 to 1982, became known as the “coroner to the stars” because he supervised the investigations of Hollywood celebrity deaths such as those of Natalie Wood and John Belushi. Noguchi also invented a method of trace metal identification that is now used throughout the United States.
Bibliography
Blanche, Tony, and Brad Schreiber. Death in Paradise: An Illustrated History of the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001.
Burton, Julian L., and Guy N. Rutty. The Hospital Autopsy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Kadish, Sanford H. Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice. Vol. 1. New York: Free Press, 1983.
"Medicolegal Death Investigation Systems, by County." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22 Mar. 2024, www.cdc.gov/nchs/comec/Medical-Death-Investigation-System-by-County.pdf. Accessed 25 June 2024.
Noguchi, Thomas T. Coroner. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.