Korean J Legal Med 2012;36:135-143. English

Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, School of Social Sciences, Gainesville State College, Gainesville, GA, USA, tchoo@gsc.edu

Division of Forensic Medicine, National Forensic Service, Seoul, Korea

Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, College of Health and Human Sciences, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC, USA

Medicolegal death investigations in the U.S. have become a critical part of crime investigations over the past several decades. additionally, the roles of medical examiners (MEs) and coroners have expanded beyond the field of criminal justice in recent years. despite the fact that these roles are becoming increasingly more important a systematic and comprehensive study of this complicated system is yet to be conducted. Since there is no national standard or federal system, medicolegal death investigations vary across states, districts, and counties in the U.S. In this paper, we attempted to classify the systems into three categories. We also examined the roles and work procedures that MEs and coroners commonly share across the country as well as the problems and challenges that the medicolegal death investigation system is facing today. In addition, we have also provided a brief summary of the Korean system in order to add a comparative perspective, since the Korean legal system differs substantially that of the U.S.

Key words : death investigation system, medicolegal death investigation, coroner, medical examiner

Review article