PROVIDED

Student’s name
Professor’s name
Course number
Date
Medical and Legal Investigations of Death.
A Questions
3. Identify and discuss all steps that should be taken to properly document a death scene from the MDI perspective. Explain the purpose of each step.
After arriving at a death scene and investigating it, an investigator should follow several different steps to come up with quality conclusions after that. Photographing the body should be the first step that a person takes which ensures that there is a permanent record preserving some of the crucial details of the body that might be needed later (Laub 19). The above should happen after authorization by the Federal or state authority followed by taking of high-quality images before touching or moving the body or other objects that might contain crucial evidence. From there, the investigator should then perform an external examination of the body. The step provides further and detailed information about the piece of evidence such as physical attributes, the cause of death among others. With all the critical evidence collected, the investigator should then preserve and ensure safe transportation of the details to the concerned body.
Identifying the person follows the above steps which are a crucial step as it determines the people close to the deceased. The investigator then goes ahead to oversee the post-mortem then document the information collected for comparison to establish inconsistencies between death and the current time.

Scene briefing follows post-mortem where various investigators get together to determine who should take specific responsibilities regarding the issue. The next of kin then gets to be notified about the matter at hand. The moves help indisposition of the body and additional relative information that might be of importance. The investigator should ensure the security of the remains which will help in determining the histories of the deceased such as health, social and mental. Releasing the jurisdiction, performing the exit procedures and assisting the family of the deceased follows the above step and the end of the process (Laub 39).
B Questions3. Please explain why MDIs need to understand basic medical terminology. Please justify your answer with an example (fictional scenario or real-world case).
Medical expertise is crucial to MDIs as the investigation process involves various procedures that require someone to have a basic knowledge of medical terminologies. Some of the critical steps in a death scene regarding the body include identification, through physical examination diagnoses and a series of laboratory tests (“MEDICOLEGAL DEATH INVESTIGATION”). All the above involves some medical knowledge that an investigator should possess before starting of anything. For jurisdictions to take place at a death scene, medical examiners have to carry out various investigations on a body to provide crucial information required in a court of law. The above is a sensitive process that only a knowledgeable person can undertake. Both identifications of the body and establishment of the cause of death all rely on the medical aspect of the investigation and the conclusions made after that have to be precise to prevent misunderstandings on other processes.
An example of a scenario where an investigator will require to have some medical knowledge include an occurrence where the body of the deceased has some wound or in a condition that needs to be explained. Wound and related issues all involve medical terms with which an inexperienced person will find it difficult to navigate through at an instant where he/she does not know. Similarly, an investigator in a crime scene will require a doctorate in dental sciences to perform identifications of a body by the odonatological process (“MEDICOLEGAL DEATH INVESTIGATION”). The procedure involved follows the making of bite-marks and comparing both biological and physical evidence which implies that it is crucial for a person to have some basic knowledge in medical terminologies to carry out such an activity.
Works Cited
Laub, J. “Death investigation: A guide for the scene investigator, a technical update.” (2011).
“MEDICOLEGAL DEATH INVESTIGATION AND THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM”. Ncbi.Nlm.Nih.Gov, 2003, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK221912/ Accessed 26 Oct 2018.