What's the Difference Between Coroners and Medical Examiners?

These two types of professional death investigators often work together, but their jobs are usually distinct. Learn the difference in this episode of BrainStuff. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here. When a person dies violently
or unusually, or in an untimely fashioned, difficult questions invariably follow.
What happened? Could it have been prevented? Is foul play involved?
Has a crime been committed? Should we be worried? Those

(00:24):
are the questions that corners, medical examiners, and forensic pathologists
wrangle with every day. They are the ones who have
to find answers for the living. We spoke with Gary
Watts the Corner in Richland County, South Carolina. He said, morally,
I think we can be judged as a civilization on
how we treat those that are dead. We talked about

(00:44):
it all the time. I don't care for dealing with
somebody that was found under a bridge or was found
in a five million dollar house. We're going to treat
them with respect and dignity. We're going to take care
of their families in carrying out their duties. Though many
of America's death investigators, stile, medical examiners and corners, whose
work is supported by taxpayers, are hampered by a lack

(01:05):
of manpower, chronic underfunding, and a general public coolness toward
their work, whether people want to face it or not.
Though these jobs are critically important, death investigators not only
uncover possible foul play, but they can spot infectious diseases
and are among the first to identify epidemics and other
public health concerns. So what's the difference between a medical

(01:27):
examiner and a corner. Lots of people use those titles interchangeably,
but they're not the same. Here's the explanation from a
two thousand three workshop held by the U S Institute
of Medicine now called the National Academy of Medicine. Quote.
The major differences between corners and medical examiners are embedded
in the manner of their selection by electoral process versus appointment,
and their professional status. Corners are elected lay people who

(01:50):
often do not have professional training, whereas medical examiners are
appointed and have board certification in a medical specialty. Lot's explained.
I think a lot of people have the misconception from
a death investigative standpoint, that it has to be one
or the other. My opinion has always been that it
needs to be professionally trained death investigators, regardless of what

(02:10):
type of system you work whether it's a corner system
or a medical examiner system. What's forty year career as
a corner includes time as a police officer and an
emergency medical technician. Like some jurisdictions throughout the US, but
not all, the Richland County Coroner's Office uses medical examiners. Again,
they're normally physicians to actually conduct autopsies. Deputy corners do

(02:33):
the fieldwork, including investigating the death scene, tracking down medical records,
and interviewing witnesses. What said, we rely on the medical
exam or the forensic pathologist to give us the medical
reason the person dies. They determine the cause of death
from a medical standpoint. Corners determined the manner of death
through an investigative process. Take for example, a gunshot victim

(02:57):
is a homicide, a suicide, an accident? Can it be determined?
What said? You cannot necessarily make that determination just from
the autopsy process. You have to have skilled investigators in
the field, death investigators to help with that process to
make sure that you come up not only with the
proper cause of death, but also the proper manner of death.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, states

(03:20):
have a myriad of different systems to conduct death investigations.
Some states use a centralized medical examiner system, some are
county or district based, and some mixing corners in varying ways.
States have differing definitions of what a coroner or a
medical examiner is. Too. Medical examiner in West Virginia, for example,
doesn't have to be a physician. In Georgia, someone can

(03:42):
be both the mayor and the corner if they live
in a town a fewer than five thousand people. In Nebraska,
the county attorney does the job of the corner and
in Texas, justices of the Peace handle corner duties. States
also have different requirements on what triggers an autopsy or
death investigation. All of it makes for confusing and sometimes
slipshod way that death is handled throughout the nation, From

(04:03):
one district to another. The authorities handling these issues may
have vastly differing competency and resources. What's common, it seems,
is this funding is a problem almost everywhere, and largely
because of that, it's extremely difficult to find qualified medical
examiners or forensic pathologists who can make good money outside

(04:23):
of government work, and it's becoming harder to pay qualified
people who know their way around the field. A report
by the Scientific Working Group on Medical Legal Death Investigation
cited a number of reasons for the shortage of forensic pathologists.
Some estimate that fewer than five hundred are practicing in
the US. Among the reasons a lack of educational centers

(04:44):
that teach the profession, lacks funding to support that education,
high dropout rates, tight budgets among states and counties, and
the resultant low salaries the deter young people who may
want to enter the field. That shortage may be causing
some disturbing problems. A the eleven investigation by NPR, PBS,
and Pro Publica found jurisdictions that were cutting back on

(05:05):
autopsies when the cause of death seemed obvious. Craig Harvey,
a death investigator with the Los Angeles County Corners Office
now retired, told NPR at that time, there's no way
that we can look at every case we should probably
be looking at. When you only see one in every
three cases, the possibility that homicide is going to be
missed are pretty great. For Watts, who has been involved

(05:27):
with more than thirty death investigations in his career, The
Systemic problems always come back to money. If states don't
cough up enough to pay the right kind of experts,
the problems will persist, he said. The death investigation offices
are usually the last ones to get funding. It's something
that people either don't want to think about, try not
to think about, or won't think about until it affects

(05:49):
them personally, and then everyone wants to know all the
answers and exactly what happened. Today's episode written by John
Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang with kind assistants from
Dylan Fagan. Brain Stuff is a production of iHeart Radio's
How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of
other topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.

(06:10):
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