“There is no acceptable reason for [a detective to be present during an autopsy].”

[brightknightie]

This past weekend, I read an essay in the Washington Post that left me with a case of "TV lied to me!" Specifically, Forever Knight, and just about every other police procedural told from the primary perspective of the police officers. (A few procedurals told from the primary perspective of the medical examiners have managed to get this right.) A certain genre storytelling shorthand is flat wrong, and ... we should be able to get some fanfic stories out of that discrepancy, I imagine?

This fannish insight is not the primary point of the essay: "Study finds cognitive bias in how medical examiners evaluate child deaths" by Radley Balko (Feb. 20, 2021 at 8:33 a.m. PST).

Rather, what leaped up and grabbed me with its real-world obviousness, at odds with so many scenes from so many procedurals, is:

...to the extent possible, medical examiners should be given only medically relevant information. Often this isn’t the case, because in much of the country, medical examiners are considered part of the prosecution’s team, not independent analysts. So they’re privy to information that can corrupt their analysis. “I’ve seen cases where a detective was present during the autopsy itself,” Dror says. “There is no acceptable reason for that.” To that end, we could reduce cognitive bias by ensuring that medical examiners’ offices are independent of police and prosecutors, and that law enforcement officials don’t have a say in an analyst’s raises, promotions or performance reviews. That the very notion of a state ME testifying for the defense seems to offend some prosecutors demonstrates that in many jurisdictions, an ME isn’t expected to be independent. [emphasis mine]

Blink. Blink. He's right. He's completely right. Factual information should flow from the medical examiner to the detectives, and eventually to the prosecution and defense equally, without bias. The medical examiner should not be told by the detectives what the detectives suspect and perhaps hope to hear, and thus be primed to see what may not be there.

Nick, Schanke, and Tracy should stay out of the morgue. Or Natalie should at least control the conversation much more strictly. Natalie should not be involved in solving cases in any way until after her full and final report is filed.

As we all know, in genre procedurals from the primary perspective of the police officers, the medical examiner or coroner is storytelling shorthand. Exposition incarnate. Natalie, or Ducky, or all the others on Wikipedia's list of fictional medical examiners stand in for all the other scientists and technicians who would be involved in a real investigation. They give the detective character a consistent, compressed, "science-y" source of whatever information is needed for that episode. And of course the fictional detective is by definition the hero: why wouldn't the fictional coroner be on his or her side every step of the way?

And of course the answer is that, with all the best intentions, we humans get knocked about by bias. Out here in the real world, at least, we have to put up guardrails to get the most unbiased results possible in each circumstance. In there in the fictional world... different stories, new angles, new questions?

Comments

[lightbird]

Interesting article, and the cognitive bias discussed is not at all surprising.

It's been a long time since I've seen it, but at one point a while back they were showing re-runs of Quincy M.E., which was one of the really early shows focused on forensic medicine. If I remember correctly, one of the main themes throughout the show was that Quincy's views based on his findings were almost always at odds with the police's conclusions. He investigated and discovered possible answers that no one thought of or heard of, and had to convince everyone else, and that added conflict and drama.

Forever Knight, of course, had a completely different focus, and like most police procedurals they bent the reality and accuracy for narrative purposes (I think the only time that doesn't happen in fiction is when the medical examiner is an incidental character rather than a main or regular supporting character). It would be interesting to see fanfic writers take a different tack, but I wonder if that would constrict the storytelling. If, for example, you had a story where Nat did her thorough examination without interacting with Nick or Schanke or Tracy at all about it, until after she's done with it. I wonder how that lack of interaction would affect the story.

[brightknightie]

>"... but I wonder if that would constrict the storytelling."

Agreed that incorporating a new complication would require changes in customary storytelling. I certainly am not proposing that every story has to take any certain tack.

Yet I think some interesting character interactions could come out of adding this as an obstacle the FK characters have to work with within their otherwise canon-'90s norms. New obstacle, new scenes, new conversations...?

And perhaps even some whole stories could come out of engaging the concept, like a story in which Natalie's report is called into question because of suspected undue police influence, or a story in which Natalie's conclusion disagrees with the officers, or a story in which there's new citywide guidance for metro employees to reduce undue influence that requires changes in patterns of interaction for our characters...?

Most of all, of course, I think that the essay is correct in how things should be made better in the real world. Granted that things weren't better in the '90s, we don't have to depict them as being better than they were... but as the '90s recede into historical fiction themselves, we can pick apart customs that have not held up...?

[lightbird]

Yet I think some interesting character interactions could come out of adding this as an obstacle the FK characters have to work with within their otherwise canon-'90s norms. New obstacle, new scenes, new conversations...?

Absolutely. And it sounds like you have some great new FK fic ideas!

Thanks for sharing the article. It's informative and highlights important issues.

[greerwatson]

Whether it's acceptable or not from an ethical perspective, it does look as though it's pretty common practice: https://www.quora.com/Do-police-officers-actually-attend-an-autopsy-of-a-murder-victim-and-offer-comments-and-questions-during-the-procedure">

And this (http://netk.net.au/CrimJustice/Autopsies.asp) is an interesting description of how autopsies should be conducted. While it doesn't mention police officers, it does say, "A crime scene examiner should be present at the autopsy of all suspicious or unexplained deaths. The officer takes notes of the procedures and colour photographs or a video recording of the sequence of the autopsy." (Which covers CSI and similar shows.)

This report (https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/inquiries/goudge/report/v3_en_pdf/Vol_3_Eng_15.pdf), which follows an investigation into one particular pathologist's tendency to presume child abuse in all child-death cases, indicates that in Ontario in the '90s, forensic pathologists (i.e. Natalie) rarely went to the scene of death, though practice has now changed. There is no mention of police attending the autopsy: it says that results are reported to them.

Finally, there is this book excerpt (https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/criminalinvestigation/chapter/chapter-10-forensic-sciences/) from Introduction to Criminal Investigation: Processes, Practices and Thinking by Rod Gehl and Darryl Plecas. It includes the following, "An autopsy generally takes place in the pathology department of a hospital. In the case of a suspicious death or a confirmed homicide, police investigators will be present at an autopsy to gather information, take photographs, and seize exhibits of a non-medical nature, such as clothing, bullet fragments, and items that might identify the body. These items would include personal documents, fingerprints, and DNA samples."

So it's not quite so simple. It looks as though, at least in some jurisdictions, the police do send someone to the autopsy.

[senmut]

Very good points

[brightknightie]

Granted that it would be historically inaccurate to make this concern a serious focus of '90s law enforcement, it's something I'm going to try to keep in mind for future stories and reflecting on the canon. The lines to be crossed were in different places then, but the lines existed; Natalie's independence or lack of independence could matter.

[pj1228]

Interesting, but might be different nowadays than in the 1990s.
The thing about bias surely makes sense in achieving neutral findings, however wouldn't it be much more prductive if coroners and police detectives worked together and shared findings immediately instead of sequentially, especially when time is of the essence?

[brightknightie]

Yes, hopefully things are getting better today than they were in the '90s.

What I'm thinking is: As the '90s become themselves a time of historical fiction, we can re-value in our stories the behaviors of that time that have not aged well, just as we do in flashbacks of other eras. And perhaps we would re-value Natalie's independence to make her professional judgments with less influence...?

>"wouldn't it be much more productive if coroners and police detectives worked together and shared findings immediately instead of sequentially, especially when time is of the essence?"

I think that the real-world situations are not often "when time is of the essence." Most deaths aren't murders, much less serial murders. In fiction, of course, situations are intensified.

I do not know yet know how it should ideally work in practice, day to day. I read only the one essay. :-)

The essay is mainly about bias in findings of manner of death -- accident, suicide, murder, or natural causes -- and coroners being influenced to pronounce "murder" when if the coroners were less influenced they might pronounce "accident" or "natural causes" instead.

[skieswideopen]

That is very interesting. And of course, you're right about the fictional detective being the hero, and so why wouldn't the ME be on their side?

The technical bit that always gets me is lineups. I remember hearing in university that sequential lineups produce superior results to parallel lineups--fewer false positives, without affecting the number of correct identifications. Apparently if you see every suspect at once, your brain tends to look for the face that most closely matches the one you remember, whereas if you're given only one at a time, with no hint as to what's coming next, your brain tries harder for an exact match. But of course, looking at one photo at a time makes for pretty poor television compared to leading a witness into a room to gaze at the suspect through a one-way mirror, so I don't see police procedurals adopting that method any time soon.

[brightknightie]

Thank you for the reminder about sequential lineups; I remember reading that, now that you mention it.

I think that I have never seen a proper sequential lineup in a TV fiction. I have seen characters given books of photos from time to time, but as depicted on TV, with pages showing many photos at once, that's the same problem as a parallel lineup, mitigated only by having the whole book (or stack of books) to hunt for a "closest match." Hmmm. Yes, all the drama is lost; it works for a story as something to have the witness character do in the background while the detectives discuss something else in the foreground, not as any kind of climax.