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Position: Coroner's Report
Email: chuser@durangoherald.com
DNA testing procedures developed by the medical examiner’s office in New York City have come under attack, calling into question the validity of some DNA-based convictions. The office recently...
DATE: Nov. 3, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Two weeks after Hurricane Irma, the Miami Herald reported that Florida’s unofficial death toll had risen to 75. Depending on the practice philosophies of Florida medical examiners, that figure...
DATE: Oct. 8, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
In May, Frank J. Kerrigan, 82, got the phone call every grieving family longs for. “Your son is alive,” said Bill Shinker, a family friend who had been a pall bearer for Kerrigan’s son, Frank, 11...
DATE: Sept. 1, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Sarah Traynor, 7 years old and mildly autistic, was found hanging by a jump rope attached to the top bar of a swing set in her backyard. The Supreme Court of Victoria at Melbourne, Australia,...
DATE: Aug. 4, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Quaaludes were popular before my time, but I saw cocaine and methamphetamine sweep the country and witnessed a renewed taste for heroin. Now, we have the “opioid crisis” – an epidemic of deaths...
DATE: July 1, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Medical examiners play mind games a lot. We create hypothetical death scenarios and work out the best certifications – the forensic pathology equivalent of Sudoku puzzles. We play these games alone...
DATE: June 2, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
The Colorado law that legalizes physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill requires certifiers to classify such deaths as natural. The cause of death must be the terminal illness, not drug...
DATE: May 6, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Tanisha Anderson, a 37-year-old black woman, died during a struggle with Cleveland police in 2014. Her death was certified a homicide, but a judge refused to allow the medical examiner to testify...
DATE: April 1, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Forensic pathology has been a recognized medical subspecialty only since 1959, and I fear that for my profession, time is already running out. Doctors need to know why people die so they can...
DATE: March 2, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
Sometimes medical examiners have to decide whether it’s worth it to do everything they can. Families may think no stone should be left unturned in the effort to identify a body or determine a cause...
DATE: Feb. 2, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
When a child dies because somebody did something stupid, should medical examiners certify the manner of death as an accident because no harm was intended? Or homicide – stupidicide, we sometimes...
DATE: Jan. 4, 2017 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
The Mountain West is a place for dreams. The spectacular vistas, primeval forests and the hardy, independent folks who live there are romanticized in our national history and popular culture. It...
DATE: Nov. 30, 2016 | COLUMN: Coroner's Report
