Evidence Management Best Practices in Medicolegal Death Investigation

Abstract

Medicolegal death investigation is the process of determining and reporting the cause and manner of death for unexpected fatalities. This process involves activities at the death scene, in the morgue and in the forensic laboratory. It is best practice to manage a deceased body as an item of evidence and to apply evidence management principles throughout the medicolegal process, from retrieval of the decedent from the death scene, to storage prior to and after examination, during the postmortem examination and during release of the decedent to family. This chapter describes evidence management best practices for the medicolegal investigation of individual fatalities as well as multiple/mass fatality incidents. The best practices described pertain to evidence collected by medicolegal death investigators (MLDIs), forensic pathologists, forensic anthropologists, forensic entomologists, forensic laboratory personnel and the application of these best practices in both daily medicolegal death investigations and in the multiple/mass fatality context.