Crime Scene Pathology
VIDEO: Crime Scene Forensics featuring Associate Professor David Ranson.
The forensic pathologist’s work extends beyond the routine performance of autopsies and the presentation of the results to the coroner and the courts.
The case investigation for a forensic pathologist is initiated by a death; the investigation process includes analysis of information relating to the deceased person prior to death, together with examination and analysis of the scene and environment in which the person died or was found dead.
Suspicious Deaths
In allegedly suspicious deaths, the death scene is examined by a team of individuals that comprises police officers, forensic scientists, forensic pathologists and other specialist examiners such as forensic anthropologists (for investigation of grave sites and the analysis of skeletal remains). A variety of other individuals are also involved in the examination of a scene of a suspicious death including surveyors, photographers and video-camera operators.
In most cases after a dead body is found in suspicious circumstances, a forensic pathologist is called to the scene not only to examine the body and provide initial information to the investigators, but also to study the environment in which the body lies.
The Crime Scene
The investigation of the environment of the death helps the pathologist in coming to conclusions regarding the subsequent macroscopic and microscopic autopsy findings. In many cases, by virtue of training and long experience in attending at death scenes associated with crimes, the forensic pathologist can contribute directly to the crime scene examination and provide initial advice in some areas of forensic science, including biological trace evidence and ballistics.
The inclusion of specialist forensic scientists from a wide variety of disciplines within the death scene investigation team is important, and the forensic pathologist may well have a part to play in helping to determine the appropriate specialists that may be required.
Forensic pathologists usually include details of their crime scene investigation in the autopsy report. In doing so, however, they usually refer to those elements of the crime scene that impinge directly or indirectly upon the characteristics of the deceased person.
In most circumstances, it is the police crime scene examiners or forensic scientists who complete the remaining examination of a crime scene and deal with all of the matters not directly related to the body.
The amount of information that can be gathered from a crime scene is considerable. The correlation of the appearances of a death scene with the findings at autopsy may be of crucial significance in reconstructing the circumstances surrounding the individual’s death. For example, suppose an individual is found face down in a domestic kitchen with an external head injury that upon autopsy is revealed to be associated with an underlying hemorrhage around the brain; the injury could have been caused either by an attack by another person, or by a fall.
Close examination of the scene of death may reveal blood and hair on the sharp edge of some furniture, suggesting that the individual was injured in a fall. Alternatively, blood and hair on an implement such as a potential weapon might suggest that the injuries were caused by the deliberate action of another person.
This integration of both the physical examination of the dead body with the physical examination of the environment in which the body is found is of crucial significance in the reconstruction of the events surrounding a death.
For more information on crime scene forensic pathology, download our VIFM Information Sheet: CSI: The Real Deal?
Dead Body Examiner
The media and most of the lay public recognise the forensic pathologist as a dead body examiner. As we have just seen, the pathologist performs a preliminary examination of a body at the death scene (or the place in which the body is found).
The formal examination of a dead body occurs, of course, during the process of the autopsy. But the autopsy is more than an external and internal examination of the body. The processes involved in carrying out an autopsy covers a wide range of activities, and can include radiology and fluoroscopy as well as endoscopic techniques for examining the interior of the body without formal dissection.
The scope of examination of a body at the scene of death depends on the circumstances, but in most cases, some initial information can be gathered from the position of the body, the presence or absence of any rigor mortis or post-mortem hypostatic lividity (discoloration of the skin), and the temperature of the body.
A body that is fully clothed or otherwise wrapped and partly concealed may be difficult to examine adequately at the scene, and no definitive conclusions regarding the nature of the death should be made until the body has been examined fully at autopsy and the necessary follow-up tests have been completed.
Natural or Unnatural Death?
In some cases, it may be possible for a pathologist, on examining a body at the scene of a suspicious death, to raise the possibility that the death is, in fact, the result of a natural disease process. There are situations where a pathologist is confronted with an apparently suspicious scene of death – eg, one involving substantial blood loss -but evaluation of the body at the scene reveals that alcohol may have played a part. In this example the death may have occurred as a result of complications of alcohol-related liver disease, where, for example, cirrhosis of the liver can cause varicose veins to form in the gullet or oesophagus which can lead to profuse vomiting of blood.
In other situations, individuals have been found covered in blood which appears to have come from the region of their head and which was thought to have been caused by trauma to the head. In a number of these cases the blood has been identified as coming from the nose and mouth and the bleeding has been shown to be the result of lung tumours or tuberculosis eroding into major blood vessels. Clearly, an autopsy will ultimately resolve these situations, and an efficient and timely autopsy service can be of great benefit to the coroner, police and other investigators.
It is in this specific field of death investigation that the forensic pathologist has almost sole responsibility. The efficiency of this service and the provision of timely information from the pathologist to co-investigators, such as the police, may result in better focusing of police investigation. In the case where a suspicious death is rapidly confirmed as being the result of natural disease, the information provided by the forensic pathologist can prevent the waste of expensive police time.