What to know
A medicolegal investigation is conducted by a coroner’s or a medical examiner’s office to determine how someone died. Each state sets its own standards for what kinds of deaths require investigation.
Background
A medicolegal investigation is conducted by a coroner's or medical examiner's office to determine the circumstances under which someone died. Medicolegal investigations are a scientific inquiry into a death under a coroner's or medical examiner's legal jurisdiction.
A medicolegal officer can be a coroner or medical examiner. In most states, coroners are not required to be physicians or forensic pathologists. State law often mandates specific death investigation training for coroners.
At the request of the National Center for Health Statistics, CDC's Public Health Law Program assessed coroner and medical examiner laws across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each state sets its own standards for what kinds of deaths require investigation and its own professional and continuing education requirements for individuals carrying out these investigations.
These different standards can have a broad-reaching public health impact as variations in the collection and reporting of cause-of-death data could hinder public health officials' ability to conduct accurate mortality surveillance.
Twenty states and DC have laws requiring that autopsies be performed only by pathologists. Find information regarding selected characteristics of deaths requiring investigation by state. Learn about selected characteristics of deaths requiring autopsy by state.
The map below leads to profiles of each state's coroner and/or medical examiner death investigation laws. Published January 15, 2015.