Coroner
A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into the manner or cause of death.
The official may also investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within the coroner's jurisdiction.
The additional roles that a coroner may oversee in judicial investigations may be subject to the attainment of suitable legal and medical qualifications.
[further explanation needed] The office of coroner originated in medieval England[2][3][4] and has been adopted in many countries whose legal systems have at some time been subject to English or United Kingdom law.
[6][7] This role provided a local county official whose primary duty was to protect the financial interest of the Crown in criminal proceedings.
"[8] This role was qualified in Chapter 24 of Magna Carta in 1215, which states: "No sheriff, constable, coroner or bailiff shall hold pleas of our Crown."
The person who found a body from a death thought sudden or unnatural was required to raise the "hue and cry" and to notify the coroner.
Going further back in time, we find that the term comes from antiquity, namely when the deceased was entrusted to the coronator, that is to a necrofor who prepared the corpse according to custom and, among other things, put a small laurel or myrtle wreath (Lat.
The use was already of ancient Greece and see e. g. Theophilus Christophorus Harles (Bionis smyrnaei and Moschi syracusani quae supersunt etc.
Erlangen, 1780), who quotes Euripides, Clement of Alexandria, Chionus of Heraclea and others in this regard; see also James Claude Upshaw Downs: "The origin of official death investigation is traced to at least 44 B.C.
[10] In Brazil, almost like in the case of medical examiners, such activity has always been privative to physicians, but necessarily policeful, reason why its common denomination, Médicos-Legistas (Physician-Legists), is due to such bionicity.
In the Department of Federal Police, according to the National Association of Federal Forensic Experts (Associação Nacional dos Peritos Criminais Federais – APCF), "the Federal Forensic Expert is a police officer with technical and scientific knowledge in the service of justice and a professional specialized in finding or providing so-called material evidence through the scientific analysis of traces produced and left in the commission of crimes",[11] what, in case of the Physician-Legists (inserted in the aforementioned career), applies in relation to highly complex federal crimes involving corpses that need to be examined by the Forensic Medicine and Dentistry Sector linked to the National Institute of Criminalistics.
Death investigation is the responsibility of each individual Canadian province and territory—there is no overarching federal authority.
The Medical Examiner's system (used in Alberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador) is just over one century old and originated in the United States.
[12] They do not determine civil or criminal responsibility, but instead make and offer recommendations to improve public safety and prevention of death in similar circumstances.
[citation needed] Coroner or Medical Examiner services are under the jurisdiction of provincial or territorial governments, and in modern Canada generally operate within the public safety and security or justice portfolio.
[citation needed] The provinces of Alberta,[13] Manitoba,[14] Nova Scotia[15] and Newfoundland and Labrador[16] now have a Medical Examiner system, meaning that all death investigations are conducted by specialist physicians trained in Forensic Pathology, with the assistance of other medical and law enforcement personnel.
In the other provinces and territories with a coroner system, namely British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Quebec, New Brunswick, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon, coroners are not necessarily physicians but generally have legal, medical, or investigative backgrounds.
The new system operates under the Coroners Act 2006, which: In Sri Lanka, the Ministry of Justice appoints Inquirers into Sudden Deaths under the Code of Criminal Procedure to carry out an inquest into the death of a sudden, unexpected and suspicious nature.
Whilst coroners are appointed and paid by local authorities, they are not employees of those local authorities but rather independent judicial office holders who can be removed from office only by the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord Chancellor.
[23] Now deaths requiring judicial examination are reported to the procurator fiscal and dealt with by fatal accident inquiries conducted by the sheriff for the area.
When the death is suspected to have been either sudden with unknown cause, violent, or unnatural, the coroner decides whether to hold a post-mortem examination and, if necessary, an inquest.
A coroner's investigation may involve a simple review of the circumstances, ordering a post-mortem examination, or they may decide that an inquest is appropriate.
When a person dies in the custody of the legal authorities (in police cells, or in prison), an inquest must be held.
However, a case in which a person has died under the control of central authority must have a jury, as a check on the possible abuse of governmental power.
A senior judge is sometimes appointed ad hoc as a deputy coroner to undertake a high-profile inquest, such as those into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and the victims of the 2005 London bombings.
In the U.S., the terms "coroner" and "medical examiner" vary widely in meaning by jurisdiction, as do qualifications and duties for these offices.
Additionally, the law often requires investigations for deaths that are suspicious (as defined by jurisdiction) or violent.
For example, in Indiana, Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, Ohio, Alabama, and North Carolina, statutes grant coroners these powers, serving as a check on the sheriff's authority.
The coroner/ME typically uses the same investigatory skills of a police detective because the answers are available from the circumstances, scene, and recent medical records.
