The Modern Coroner of Idaho

Idaho’s coroner offices are independent, investigative, government agency.  Coroner’s medicolegal death investigations are unique, unbiased, and conducted without undue influence from other agencies within the government or criminal justice system. This approach assures that the conclusions of the coroner’s investigational process are unbiased and valid, thereby maintaining the public trust in the fairness of the investigational process.

Idaho Coroner’s Offices are tasked with multiple critical duties. The most publicly visible of those is providing the cause and manner of death on cases that fall under the coroner’s jurisdiction. An unrecognized role, that is of paramount importance, is that of safeguarding the community in which we serve.

There are many ways in which the coroner’s office accomplishes this task, such as identifying public health risks, supporting law enforcement efforts, providing forensic observations and analysis to medical, surgical and trauma services, educating new law enforcement, forensic and medical professionals and providing essential services to families in times of loss.  

These duties start with investigating deaths that fall under coroner jurisdiction.  These cases include those of a forensic nature or unexplained deaths. Examples of forensic cases are homicides, suicides, accidents, or deaths of a suspicious nature where the circumstances surrounding the death are unknown. Of special note are the investigation of infants. The deaths of these, or any child death, must be thoroughly investigated if the death occurred without a known medical cause.

The old perception that coroners are simply “body snatchers” is an outdated misconception and poorly reflects the forensic knowledge required of the modern coroner.   This profession has evolved from a vocation with ill-defined requirements into a profession with nationally recognized certifications. The modern medicolegal coroner is now a key component in all thorough multidisciplinary death investigations.  Medicolegal death investigations can reveal information that not only aids in determining the manner of death but also the cause itself.

There are many essential duties and responsibilities performed by this office that contribute to the safety and well-being of our community. Among them are:

Medicolegal Death Investigations: One of the coroner's office's key responsibilities is to conduct meticulous medicolegal death investigations. These include suspicious, unattended, accidental, or traumatic deaths.  These investigations are crucial in properly determining a decedent’s cause and manner of death.  Our medicolegal death investigators strive to provide services of the highest national standards.  Each investigator is required to undergo a rigorous in-house training program and obtain certification from the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators (ABMDI). This is of critical importance because it is not widely understood that a thorough medicolegal death investigation is required for the forensic pathologist to determine cause and manner of death. Without this required investigation the manner and even the cause of death could be undetermined.

Infant Deaths

The medicolegal death investigation of an infant is of critical importance. Often infant deaths are the result of unsafe sleeping environments that are not revealed upon autopsy.  The circumstances leading up to the death are of critical importance in revealing the true case.  Without this needed investigation the cause of death may not be revealed, and the death will be classified as undetermined.  This could result in a second infant being placed in the same unsafe sleeping environment and tragically, another infant death.  Careful investigations of the scene of death, along with doll reenactments, is now the gold standard in medicolegal death investigations.  

Ongoing Threats to the Community

The Coroner’s Office investigations often will expose dangers that have claimed the life of a victim. Additionally, the coroner’s office may also expose hazards that pose a continuing threat to others.  These include unrecognized carbon monoxide leaks, electrical hazards, communicable diseases, animal attacks, unrecognized homicides, and unsafe environments.  Sharing the cause of death with the community stakeholders helps prevent additional deaths and contributes to overall public safety.   

Public Health Surveillance:  The Bingham County Coroner’s Office collects and provides data on deaths within the jurisdiction of the Office.  This is valuable information used for public health surveillance and identifies patterns of disease, trends in mortality rates, and emerging health threats.  This information is used by the Idaho Department of Health and other related departments in the allocation of resources for public health intervention and educational programs.

Information and data are also imperative for understanding public health trends and risks.   Acutely, diseases such as meningitis, tuberculosis, COVID-19, and even Creutzfeld-Jakob disease can be identified and reported as a public health threat.  After the identification of such threats the coroner’s office, working with our partners in public health, can prophylactically address the crisis and prevent further deaths.

Mental Health Surveillance:  The Coroner’s Office also monitors and reports on possible mental health crises.  Most notable is that of the clustering of teen suicides.  Upon identifying a potential crisis, the coroner will reach out to public health as well as the local school system to address the issue and employee mental health professionals in the community to prevent additional deaths.  

Supporting and Partnering with Law Enforcement:  Coroners work closely with law enforcement, even though our investigations are independent. These efforts help ensure that law enforcement’s investigation is focused in the appropriate direction. Findings revealed in the coroner’s scene investigation or revealed at autopsy could change the entire direction of law enforcement’s investigations.  Partnering with law enforcement in death scene investigations can provide and preserve crucial evidence in criminal investigations. These not only lead to the successful prosecution of criminals but also prevent unnecessary expense when no crime has been committed. This not only contributes to public safety but also helps conserve the taxpayer’s dollars.

Identification:

Coroner’s office also has the responsibility of definitively identifying the deceased. Obtaining information such as fingerprints, dental records, radiological records, and DNA can be utilized to this end.  Information such as this, is obtained during the medicolegal process and is utilized by the forensic staff and pathologists to make a definitive identification. Not only will this process give families answers, but it will, at times, reveal the true identity of a decedent which may close cold cases where the perpetrator was previously unknown.

Medical, Surgical and Trauma Services Monitoring  

Upon the conclusion of every medicolegal death investigation, the information obtained is available for medical professionals to aid in monitoring and improving medical and surgical procedures.  If the accepted standard of care fails to prevent a death, the results of an autopsy could potentially alter or improve the historically accepted method of treatment.  In this manner, new procedures or treatments can arise to save future lives.

Organ & Tissue Donation: Organ donation saves lives.  When a proper medicolegal death investigation is conducted not only can the decedent become an organ and/or tissue donor but a successful prosecution can proceed.  The antiquated notion that organ donation will prevent a successful prosecution has been proved to false nationally.  Every instance when a coroner authorizes organ donation, lives are saved. This would not be possible without a proper medicolegal death investigation.

Additional Family and Public Services: In coroner jurisdiction cases, this Office works with grieving families to provide valuable services, such as answering general case questions, fulfilling records requests, and certifying cremations.  Our teams handle grieving families with compassion and respect to provide valuable resources and information to help people in their times of need.  The investigative information gathered by the coroner’s office can be of the utmost importance to family of the decedent.  The family’s ability to settle an estate, submit for insurance benefits, receive other government benefits, and gain a sense of closure hinges on the timeliness of the coroner’s investigations and case closures. All decedents are treated with professionalism, dignity, and compassion.   

Child, Overdose, and Suicide Fatality Review Committees: The Coroner’s forensic pathologists also participate in the Idaho Child Fatality Review Committee. This committee works to Identify patterns and trends in child deaths and improve the quality and comprehensiveness of child fatality data. Helping state agencies, law enforcement, and community organizations work to prevent and investigate child fatalities and recommend changes to policy, law, or practice to reduce preventable deaths in an effort to identify and address risks to children.  

Outreach and Education:  This Office has formalized its public outreach and education program.  The employee-driven program participates in community events, provides educational presentations to high school and college students, and works to keep the lines of communication open with our stakeholders.  They do this through interagency training and roundtable meetings with law enforcement, funeral homes, health care providers, and emergency medical services.  The team works closely with hospitals, hospice providers, other healthcare providers, funeral homes, and the public to promote, raise awareness, and educate the public on the role of the Coroner’s Office.  

Professional Education:

The Coroner’s Office also participates in the education of our future law enforcement, medicolegal and medical professionals. By affiliation and precipitation with our local universities and medical schools, future law enforcement officers, deputy coroners and doctors obtain a valuable education that will provide ongoing care for the citizens of Idaho.  

Mass Disaster Preparedness: Mass fatality incidents are defined as any incident resulting in more fatalities than can be routinely managed by the local medicolegal authority. By understanding their jurisdictional responsibility in a mass fatality incident, coroners have the opportunity to recognize the importance of recovery operations to the incident and the community.

In response to a mass fatality incident, the coroner must execute and oversee an array of operational tasks including, yet not limited to: scene investigation; documenting and recovering victim remains and evidentiary items at a disaster site; developing and implementing fatality related public communication messages; credentialing and managing support staff; supporting the information gathered at missing persons call centers and family assistance centers; performing morgue operations, including ante-mortem and postmortem data collection for victim identification; notifying next of kin; securing, storing and releasing victim remains for final disposition; and certifying cause and manner of death.

In the event of a legislated aviation or rail disaster and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) involvement, or in the event of a federal criminal violation and subsequent Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) involvement, the coroner will remain the authority for death investigation, victim identification, and death certification functions, while the NTSB and FBI, respectively, will serve as the lead investigative agency.

Therefore, mass disaster preparedness is critical to effective and efficient incident management, both for the coroner and for county stakeholders.

Summary:  

The coroner’s offices of Idaho play a vital role in safeguarding the community.  Coroners provide a structured professional response to deaths that fall under our jurisdiction.  We ensure that each case is thoroughly investigated and evaluated utilizing the highest national forensic standards. Every case is handled with the utmost compassion, integrity, and respect. Idaho has entered a new chapter with its continuing population growth.  Idaho now demands the highest level of medicolegal investigation to safeguard the community. This is not only desirable, but also a critical need.