Law

The Role of Medical Examiner Expert Witnesses in the U.S. Adversarial System

In the adversarial legal system that the United States employs, expert witnesses are key to combining technical know-how with legal know-how. Medical examiners hold a special place among these experts, for they are both highly knowledgeable in their niche and, more importantly, forensics, and they are largely impartial, which makes them good candidates for cases involving medical evidence and anything that requires the kind of analysis that makes or breaks a murder trial. They are entirely necessary in the justice system because the pathologists make the impossible possible, which is to understand why, if the body lived long enough to make it to their autopsy table, that body no longer lives.

Definition and Qualifications of Medical Examiner Expert Witnesses

Certified physicians with a specialization in forensic pathology usually staff coroner’s and medical examiner’s offices. These offices employ forensic pathologists to carry out the following primary tasks and responsibilities:

– Establishing the cause and manner of death

– Conducting post-mortem examinations

– Analyzing data from the scene of the crime and from toxicology tests

When called upon as expert witnesses, medical examiners base their courtroom testimony on the above findings and analyses, and on their professional knowledge and experience.

Roles and Responsibilities

Expert Testimony

In both criminal and civil litigation, medical examiners are often asked to come and testify. Their expertise is essential in homicide cases, where they tell the court about the nature of the injury—what caused it, how it could have happened, when it happened, and what kind of death it was—if indeed it was a death at all (they’re known to occasionally resuscitate). In civil matters, they may testify about the effects of certain medical conditions, certain kinds of drugs, or particular injuries that are supposedly either no big deal or just fatal. And of course, they translate their findings into English. Or at least the jury version of English, which is sometimes considerably more comprehensible than the original medicalese.

Conducting Autopsies and Report Preparation

Before they take the stand, medical examiners do full-speed-ahead autopsies to nail down the physical reasons someone kicked the bucket. Their examinations cover a lot of ground—including the look at external and internal boo-boos, dissection of tissue (lots of tissue!) in the lab, and a few back-and-forth conversations with chemical analyses in the toxicology lab. And you know what? Their appearances in court hinge on the quality of these reports—not just on what they might say, but on what the reports themselves say, and on how well they’re put together.

Crime Scene Reconstruction

The events leading to a death may also be reconstructed by medical examiners. The characteristics of an injury, a blood spatter pattern, or some other piece of forensic evidence may tell them something about the death that the person who saw the death didn’t know. The medical examiner’s reconstruction of the fatal event and determination of the cause and manner of death may thus have an important effect on the next step in the legal process.

Challenges Encountered by Medical Examiner Expert Witnesses

Medical examiner expert witnesses possess knowledge that is rarely equaled and never surpassed. Yet they encounter many challenges. The most serious and common is cross-examination, in which the opposing advocate seeks to render the medical examiner’s work as unimportant or as biased. To survive this kind of attack, the medical examiner must be well prepared and exhibit an almost Olympic-level of confidence and consistency. There is also the question of toll on the medical examiner’s psyche. Fluently describing the inhumane acts that can be performed on human beings—to a jury that must be seen for visage and heard for vocal content, as a “body double” for the killer—can hardly be anything but a grind on the mental health of the talkative corpse expert. You may find a comprehensive source at WitnessDirectory.com

Impact on the Adversarial System

The adversarial system relies on the competing arguments of the parties involved. It expects them to present not just any old arguments but their best, most powerful, and most persuasive ones. When they do, they have to keep in mind that on the other side of the courtroom is a party that is just as motivated and just as capable and that’s going to present an equally strong case. And so, what we have are two powerful, persuasive, competing cases trying to wiggle their way into a neutral mind—a judge or jury—that has to decide which one is more convincing. And in our system, the more convincing one is the one that gets the verdict.

Conclusion

The medical examiner expert witness is essential to the U.S. adversarial legal system. Its members interpret and elucidate medical and forensic evidence. Most of the time, when they take the stand, they don’t guarantee anything. They deal in probabilities and possibilities. And when they do deal in certainties (as in, “No, this isn’t a human bone”), they’re not really absolving or condemning anyone. They’re just participating in the finding of facts. Most of the people in the courtroom aren’t scientists. They need what’s called “the scientific method” to prevail in the courtroom. “The scientific method” isn’t a euphemism for any particular secret knowledge. It’s about interpreting and telling stories.