Notes+Pages+28-48+JW

Chapter 2:

- In order to be certified as a death investigator or by the American Board of Forensic Pathology, you have to do 5 years of residency, with at least another year of training in a medical examiner's office. - being a death investigator involves determining things about death, how it happened, when and what caused the death. - death falls under 5 categories 1. Natural (environment) 2. Accidental (hostile environment) 3. Suicide (person caused death) 4. Homicide (someone else caused death) 5. Undetermined - Many deaths are "unattended deaths" which means that the person died in a place other than a hospital or any other care unit and no physician had recently examined the person for illness. - Body discovery scenes outside are categorized by where the body was found: buried, exposed, submerged in water. - The DI decides when an autopsy is in order. - Finding the time of death of a body is very difficult but there are some things that can help you figure out how it died. 1. Body Temp (normal is 98.6, and usually a body decreases by 1- 1.5 degrees per hour until it's the temp of surroundings.) 2. Discoloration (purple) 3. Rigor Mortis (body goes limp and waste products stiffen the muscles.) 4. Ocular indicators: (cloudiness in the eyes) 5. Food digestion (assumption that the stomach digests food) 6. Personal factors (witness, missing events) 7. Decay/ Decomposition Rates (very easy to indicate, depends on environment such as temp, moister, dryness, light, ect.) - Forensic entomology has supplied information on insects and finding clues to figure out details about a body. - In many cases, autopsies are the most important information - it is the examination of a body to determine the cause of death - You can figure out many causes of death such as being hit, being stabbed, being shot, and by different things. objects usually end up puncturing something and doctors are about to figure out by the way the wound is shaped. -