With the Supreme Court in the balance, every aspect of the unexpected demise of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has received intense scrutiny, from the cause of his recent death to the politically charged choice of his successor. An autopsy was not performed on the 79-year-old jurist, who was found dead in his room in a West Texas hunting resort, and that too has become a lightning rod for controversy.
This high-profile case provides an opportunity to shine some light on the practice of autopsies, and the pros and cons in circumstances like these. Pathologists, who specialize in the study of disease, are the physicians who perform autopsies. While I must emphasize that I do not know any of the details of Mr. Scalia’s health records or the events that transpired following his death (and I obviously don’t know the position of the pillows in his hotel room), there are some things that can be extrapolated.
Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevera pronounced Scalia dead under “natural causes,” according to The Washington Post. A death that occurs outside a hospital falls under the jurisdiction of the local county – typically a coroner, who is an elected official, or an appointed medical examiner, usually a doctor, in a large metropolitan area like Cook County in Illinois. Autopsies performed by coroner’s or medical examiner’s offices are “forensic autopsies,” while those in hospitals, such as the ones I have performed, are “medical autopsies.” There are many similarities in the two autopsy types, but a forensic autopsy will further investigate certain possibilities.
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