Forensic autopsy

A forensic autopsy, also called a medicolegal autopsy, is the examination of a body after death when there are legal questions to answer. It aims to do four things: find out who the person was, determine what they died of, help confirm or rule out, when possible, the manner in which they are presumed to have died, and estimate how much time has passed since death.

When it is complete, it has three parts. First, the outside of the body is examined. Next, the inside is examined. And samples are taken for ancillary studies: toxicology, which looks for chemical substances, and histopathology, which examines the organs under the microscope.

And here is a distinction that matters: the cause of death is not the same as the manner of death. A subarachnoid hemorrhage, bleeding around the brain, can come from the spontaneous rupture of an aneurysm, a bulge in the wall of an artery; that is a natural death. The same hemorrhage can come from a blow to the head, and then it is an unnatural death. It's like a flat tire: the hole is the same, but a tire that went flat on its own is not the same as one that someone punctured.