How America's broken autopsy system can mask police violence

A focus on health conditions rather than officers’ actions tells a misleading tale – and in many areas, coroners need no medical training“I can’t breathe.” With those words, George Floyd, Manuel Ellis and Elijah McClain each seemed to narrate their own deaths. Their autopsies told a different story. Floyd died of “cardiopulmonary arrest, complicating law enforcement subdual”, the report said. “An argument could be made” that drugs in his system were what killed Ellis, officials said. McClain’s cause of death was “undetermined”.Among the many layers of institutional inequality excavated by a nationwide reckoning with racism in the US is a broken system of how and by whom deaths are investigated. In most states, officials who oversee autopsies are not required to have a medical degree. The departments responsible for investigating suspicious deaths often lack funding and oversight, and work closely with – if not under the supervision of – law enforcement. As a result, many deaths at the hands of police are never reported as such, or are minimized by diagnoses that blame the victim’s heart disease or mental illness rather than an officer’s boot or bullet. Continue reading…
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