A whole bunch of cases this past week. There was the homicide where the driver was shot three times through the passenger side window. The fatal shot transected his right carotid artery. This is consistent with the finding at the scene of blood that had been sprayed out of the sunroof and down the passenger side of the car. As the detective said, it must have been quite a spectacular sight. Another bullet transected the inferior vena cava, but there was not much blood in the abdomen, which suggests that the shot through the right carotid was fatal. This kind of shows you how important that vessel is and how much pressure there is in that artery. The firearms section analyzed the bullet and determined it was from a 357 magnum revolver (a big gun).

There was also a bunch of car accidents that involved people getting out of their car on the side of the highway for various reasons and were struck. The moral here: do not get out of your car on the side of a highway. There was also a car accident that was caused by a teenager shooting stones and other hard objects with a slingshot. He was shooting out windows and basically being a little delinquent. His car collided with another car as he ran a stop sign. The teenage driver was killed and the passenger of the other car was killed. In the morgue no one had sympathy for this little twerp. His immature actions resulted in the death of himself and another innocent person.

There was also a suicide by a guy who had lost his house to the bank. When the bank came to foreclose on his house, he shot himself in the bedroom. The bank people thought he was firing at them, so they called the police. A pretty hectic scene ensued as tear gas, hostage negotiators, and rubber bullets were used to enter the house only to find out that the shot the bank people heard was from the bullet the guy shot through his head.

We also had a bunch of voodoo paraphenalia brought in. A man digging in a cemetary found some clothing and pictures of a person, along with some weird looking flesh. It turned out to be a goat tongue and some fish meat and was the result of some brujeria type occult ritual that was meant to put a curse of death on someone. My feeling is that it was one of those gothic high school students who wanted the popular girl in school to die. It was a quick case and more of a curiousity than anything.

We also had a forensic anthropologist come in and look at some bones for us. It is a fairly common occurrence for bones top be brought into the ME's office. People without a biological or medical backgroung usually have a difficult time distinguishing between human and non-human bones, so they are sent our way. Most of the time it is pretty obvious whether they are human or not, so the pathologist can look at them quickly. However, 2 vertebrae and 1 rib was brought in and it was kind of ambiguous, so they called the anthropologist. He determined that they weren't human, but they were very close. A comparative anatomist would have to make the determination as to what kind of animal it was.

In response to the comment to the post below:

Of course all the forensic evidence is gathered. You basically need an overwhelming amount of evidence in order to get a conviction. An autopsy is only a small portion of that evidence. My point was that shows like CSI make the crimes themselves seem very intricate. The forensic investigation is always very thorough. It has to be in order to hold up in court. Otherwise you can get a defense attorney pointing out the possible holes in the investigation. Also, not all laboratories are forensic certified. When a lab is forensic certified, it usually means that they are very nitpicky when it comes to an investigation. Usually, only a forensic certified lab's findings can hold up in court.

Homicide autopsies, as you might suspect, are almost tedious. The major difference between a homicide case is that the external evaluation is much more in depth. For example, fingernails and hairs are collected. Also, if the homicide is the result of a shooting, the bullet fragments inside the body must be found. This is not to say that other autopsies aren't thorough. If a case is brought into the Medical Examiner's office, it is brought there because the death is unnatural or unexpected. If it is a 95 year old man with cancer, most likely his doctor would be willing to sign the death certificate, and there would be no reason for him to be brought in. However, there would ways that an expected death like that could be brought in. If he was a visitor from out of state or if his doctor was out of town, then he would have to be brought in so that the ME could sign the death certificate. In a case like this, he probably would not even be autopsied. They would just draw some fluids and do an external examination (providing that he had a substantial past medical history). Now there are cases that the doctor knows exactly what the cause and manner of death are. A suicide or a motor vehicle accident would be good examples. If a case is brought in where the guy shot a bullet through the roof of his mouth then it seems pretty obvious that is what killed him. However, an autopsy is performed anyway because it is unnatural and unexpected (not always unexpected in the case of a suicide). The main reason for this is because you never know what you are going to find unless you look. All autopsies are done with the same care. A good reason for this could be that doctor's like to follow routines. Once they establish their routine, it is hard to break. So in your specific question of a 95 year old heart attack victim: yes they would check for petechial hemorrhaging because it is part of their routine. There are some things that are not done in every case. The best example of this is the spinal cord check. The spinal cord is only removed if the doctor suspects that it may have been injured or severed.

If I left anything unanswered, feel free to ask again.

All sorts of cases to talk about from the past few days, which I will write about as soon as I get used to this Blogger thing.

As promised, here is my interpretation of CSI and the like: CSI, like many of those types of shows, is dramatized for entertainment purposes. There are always plot twists and complications to keep it interesting, otherwise no one would watch. To do this CSI makes rare and mysterious cases seem common. Each episode there is some faked suicide or a complex double murder plot. The case is solved by a minute piece of evidence. This is not to say that this does not occur. It does. However, on CSI it seems like every case is like that. There is no way that any forensic team is getting cases like that everyday, not even in big cities. As I said, it does happen, but not as often as CSI makes it seem. It makes sense to do it this way on a television show, or else no one would watch, so you can't fault the writers for that. The other aspect that is a little exaggerated is the technology that the forensic investigators use. This new technology does exist, but there is no way that any forensics lab has every single one of those pieces of equipment. I would even be surprised if the FBI had all of that equipment in their laboratories. The reality is that each lab is run by a county or a city and there is some sort of budget. Some of that equipment is very expensive and it would not be within their budget to purchase it. It is hard to justify to taxpayers that a forensic lab is going to spend a million dollars on a piece of equipment that will help them solve 1% more crime when they already solve like 90% (these figures are not exact, but are only to illustrate the fact that it would be hard to justify spending that kind of money when the result is so minimal). However, on the whole, CSI seems to be pretty accurate when it comes to the science, which is the important thing. They just try to keep it interesting with the complex cases and flashy equipment.

Also, I don't know why they make morgues seem like such lonely places. They always show the morgue as being very dimly lit and it has a cold and lonely feel to it. That is definitely not the case. The morgue is always buzzing with activity and is actually very brightly lit (it would make sense since you are trying to examine a body). I sometimes wish CSI or shows like it would actually show more of the autopsy, but I guess that would make less people watch. Oh well.