Midlands Voices: Nebraska's coroner system is outdated, needs revamp

The writer is the Howard County Attorney and resides in St. Paul, Neb. He is a former member of the Omaha City Council and Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission.

Since November, 2007 I have served as the Howard County Attorney. Because Howard County has less than 7,000 residents and a staff consisting of myself and a secretary, I am required to wear many hats. One of those hats is county coroner. This is not only a matter of necessity but mandated by Nebraska law.

Upon taking office I was surprised there was little in the way of available training or resources for my duties as coroner. Needless to say, I read this newspaper's series of articles on Nebraska's coroner system, titled “Fatal Flaws,” with a great deal of interest.

I was disappointed the Unicameral failed to take the necessary steps this year to establish a statewide medical examiner system. Instead, it made cosmetic changes to the present county coroner system while ignoring that system's serious underlying problems. Nebraskans will continue to be served by an antiquated system consisting of “a voluntary network of regional officials” providing “death investigation support services for any location in Nebraska.”

County attorneys are now required to obtain initial and ongoing training to carry out their duties as coroner. Such an approach ignores the fact the only adequate training is four years of medical school followed by a residency to become a forensic pathologist. Simply put, a few hours of annual training will not make a lawyer competent to carry out the duties of coroner any more than a few music lessons will make him or her a concert pianist.

Not willing to wait for the Legislature to act and concerned with my lack of expertise, I applied for and received a scholarship from the National Institute of Justice to attend a training seminar in medicolegal death investigations conducted by the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York.

This training took place over a week in July and was limited to 50 students from across the country.

Students came from urban and rural jurisdictions stretching from Alaska to Florida. The vast majority had a law enforcement or medical background. I was an oddity and enjoyed a certain degree of notoriety as a prosecutor who also served as a coroner.

My colleagues were not only concerned with the lack of expertise in Nebraska's coroner system but also the inherent conflict of interest of a coroner being called as a witness in a homicide trial he is also prosecuting as county attorney.

The training itself was intense and detailed, covering the nuts and bolts of gathering and preserving evidence. It included studying various causes of death such as gunshot, stabbing, blunt force trauma, asphyxia, drowning, substance abuse, SIDS and thermal injuries.

In addition, the training included a review of DNA and forensic anthropology and odontology. It also offered instruction in communicating with family members and addressing religious concerns and objections.

What impressed me most was the vast knowledge and experience necessary to become proficient as coroner. Granted, my jurisdiction and New York City are not exactly comparable, as Howard County's entire population could be housed in a few of Manhattan's high-rise apartment buildings. However, almost every situation I learned about and discussed that week has or will eventually occur throughout this state.

Nebraska attempts to handle death investigations on the local level even though the vast majority of counties do not have the population, economic resources and tax bases to provide even rudimentary service. The only way death investigations can be handled efficiently and effectively is on the state level.

If cost and complexity are the roadblocks here, we must come to the painful realization that pathologists will never work for $8 an hour and that forensic science will not become simpler in the future.

Right now, Nebraska operates under a system devised almost a century ago. Given the world and scientific knowledge at that time, it was undoubtedly adequate, but it is no longer so.

To continue with our present system is not unlike ordering the Wright Brothers to pilot the Space Shuttle, rationalizing their competence by citing their basic knowledge of aerodynamics and propulsion.

It is time Nebraska stop trying to investigate deaths using a system inadequate for the 20th century, let alone the 21st.

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