Request By:
Mr. Robert M. Kirtley
Daviess County Attorney
Courthouse
Owensboro, Kentucky 42301
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
Recently at a meeting with the coroner and staff members of the Owensboro-Daviess County Hospital, some questions arose concerning the interpretation of language found in KRS 72.025, relating to circumstances requiring a postmortem examination to be under the direction of the coroner. The county-city hospital, through its attorney, Mr. Ron Sullivan, requests our opinion as to the interpretation of two subsections of KRS 72.025, i.e., subsections (6) and (9).
KRS 72.025(6) provides that coroners shall require a postmortem examination when the death of a human being occurs in a motor vehicle accident and when an external examination of the body does not reveal a lethal traumatic injury. See KRS 72.020(1), relating to the duty of a hospital, finding or having possession of the body of any person whose death occurred under any of the circumstances defined in KRS 72.025(1) through (12), to immediately notify the coroner, etc.
The "postmortem examination" mentioned in KRS 72.025 means a physical examination of the body by a medical examiner or by a coroner or deputy coroner who has been certified by the Department of Justice and may include an autopsy performed by a pathologist or other appropriate scientific tests administered to determine cause of death. Under this definition the coroner must use his sound discretion, and considering his certification or non-certification, as to who will conduct the postmortem, autopsy, or other scientific tests as the case may justify. See KRS 72.405(5), as to a certified coroner. A "coroner ordered autopsy" means an autopsy ordered by the coroner of jurisdiction and performed by a pathologist pursuant to such authorization in order to ascertain the cause and manner of death in a coroner's case (any of the conditions set forth in KRS 72.025).
As the Court of Appeals stated in
City of Ashland v. Miller, Ky., 283 S.W.2d 195 (1955), historically, the function of the coroner always has been to aid in the administration of criminal justice by inquiring into the circumstances of violent or suspicious deaths. The object of an inquest has been to obtain information as to whether death was caused by some criminal act.
Subsection (9) of KRS 72.025 requires a postmortem when the manner of death appears to be other than natural.
A natural death is a cessation of life, in contradistinction to violent death, a violent death being one caused by violent external means. A natural death is caused by disease or the wasting of the vital forces. See Black's Law Dictionary at page 488 and page 1742.
The Supreme Court of California, in Slevin v. Board of Police Pension Fund Comn's, 123 Cal. 130, 55 p. 785 (1898), ruled that a death from natural causes means, inter alia, that such person was not killed, i.e., the person did not die through external violence or through human agency. Thus a natural death is one occurring by the unassisted operation of natural causes, as distinguished from a violent death, one caused or accelerated by the interference of human agency.
Thus subsection (9) means an unnatural death, i.e., an abnormal death resulting from an external agency or violence, as distinguished from a natural death. For details as to when a physician or surgeon in a hospital may determine that a person is dead, see OAG 83-309, copy enclosed. Thus the phrase "other than natural", as it appears in subsection (9), is rather broad, since it explicitly excludes a natural death.
The next question concerns the interpretation of KRS 72.025(6). That subsection provides that the coroner shall provide a postmortem examination when the human death occurs in a motor vehicle accident and when an external examination of the body does not reveal a lethal traumatic injury.
That subsection means that, even though an external examination of the body reveals no lethal traumatic injury (an external blow to the body calculated to produce death), yet where it reasonably appears that the death occurred in a motor vehicle accident, it is a circumstance that is subject to a postmortem examination. The language of that subsection is somewhat misleading, since it may suggest that there be a co-existence of the fact of a motor vehicle accident and an absence of any external deadly wound or blow. However, in light of the basic theme of the statute, as to unnatural death, such construction would not make sense. Thus where a body is discovered in a motor vehicle accident, and regardless of whether or not a deadly blow or wound on the body is revealed, the situation is properly one for a postmortem. We find nothing in that subsection which suggests a departure from the basic theme of the statute, i.e., there must be a postmortem where circumstances indicate death might be from other than natural causes.