Where the Hell is Quincy When You Need Him?

NPR posts one of those please-tell-me-this-isn't-happening stories, about Donna and Joe Turner, an Oklahoma family trying to get the state to investigate their daughter Chandra's death. In 2000, her death by a gunshot wound to the chest was ruled a suicide.

It took nine years to even get an autopsy performed. While the autopsy report determined that the death was a homicide - personnel changes at the coroner's office short circuited a formal change to Chandra's cause of death.

NPR puts the original death certificate online in a fine example of journalistic WTF.

It'll be interesting to see how this case develops - because the first draft makes the coroner's office look pretty terrible.

The disparity between what people think happens at their county coroner's office - and what is actually going on nationwide is pretty astonishing. I don't think anyone believes that CSI is true to life, but to read accounts of coroners who are unlicensed - even blind for God's sake - is just mind boggling.

Frontline and ProPublica have given this topic both barrels in the last week.

• Frontline: Post Mortem
• ProPublica: The Real CSI
• ProPublica: Autopsy Firm’s High Caseloads, Practices Lead to Errors
• ProPublica: Without Competition, Private Firm Reaps Millions in Autopsy Work
• ProPublica: Second Chances Underscore Flaws in Death Investigations
• ProPublica: How to Investigate Coroners and Medical Examiners

Grim reading, but fascinating stuff.