He is the author of 13 books including Uncommom Sense, the Spiritual Chocolate series, Grandpa's Store, Minister's Guidebook insights from a fellow minister. His column is published weekly in over 600 publications in all 50 states. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily representative of any other group or organization. We welcome comments and views from our readers. Submit your letters to the editor or commentary on a current event 24/7 to editor@oursentinel.com.
by Terri Dee
Dr. Glenn Mollette is a syndicated American columnist and author of Grandpa's Store, American Issues, and ten other books. He is read in all 50 states. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily representative of any other group or organization.
This article is the sole opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of The Sentinel. We welcome comments and views from our readers. Submit your letters to the editor or commentary on a current event 24/7 to editor@oursentinel.com.
When a group of physicians gathered in Washington state for an annual meeting, one made a startling revelation: If you ever want to know when, how — and where — to kill someone, I can tell you, and you'll get away with it. No problem.
That's because the expertise and availability of coroners, who determine cause of death in criminal and unexplained cases, vary widely across Washington, as they do in many other parts of the country.
"A coroner doesn't have to ever have taken a science class in their life," said Nancy Belcher, chief executive officer of the King County Medical Society, the group that met that day.
Her colleague's startling comment launched her on a four-year journey to improve the state's archaic death investigation system, she said. "These are the people that go in, look at a homicide scene or death, and say whether there needs to be an autopsy. They're the ultimate decision-maker," Belcher added.
Each state has its own laws governing the investigation of violent and unexplained deaths, and most delegate the task to cities, counties, and regional districts. The job can be held by an elected coroner as young as 18 or a highly trained physician appointed as medical examiner. Some death investigators work for elected sheriffs who try to avoid controversy or owe political favors. Others own funeral homes and direct bodies to their private businesses.
Overall, it's a disjointed and chronically underfunded system — with more than 2,000 offices across the country that determine the cause of death in about 600,000 cases a year.
"There are some really egregious conflicts of interest that can arise with coroners," said Justin Feldman, a visiting professor at Harvard University's FXB Center for Health and Human Rights.
Belcher's crusade succeeded in changing some aspects of Washington's coroner system when state lawmakers approved a new law last year, but efforts to reform death investigations in California, Georgia, and Illinois have recently failed.
Rulings on causes of death are often not cut-and-dried and can be controversial, especially in police-involved deaths such as the 2020 killing of George Floyd. In that case, Minnesota's Hennepin County medical examiner ruled Floyd's death a homicide but indicated a heart condition and the presence of fentanyl in his system may have been factors. Pathologists hired by Floyd's family said he died from lack of oxygen when a police officer kneeled on his neck and back.
In a recent California case, the Sacramento County coroner's office ruled that Lori McClintock, the wife of congressman Tom McClintock, died from dehydration and gastroenteritis in December 2021 after ingesting white mulberry leaf, a plant not considered toxic to humans. The ruling triggered questions by scientists, doctors, and pathologists about the decision to link the plant to her cause of death. When asked to explain how he made the connection, Dr. Jason Tovar, the chief forensic pathologist who reports to the coroner, said he reviewed literature about the plant online using WebMD and Verywell Health.
The various titles used by death investigators don't distinguish the discrepancies in their credentials. Some communities rely on coroners, who may be elected or appointed to their offices, and may — or may not — have medical training. Medical examiners, on the other hand, are typically doctors who have completed residencies in forensic pathology.
In 2009, the National Research Council recommended that states replace coroners with medical examiners, describing a system "in need of significant improvement."
Massachusetts was the first state to replace coroners with medical examiners statewide in 1877. As of 2019, 22 states and the District of Columbia had only medical examiners, 14 states had only coroners, and 14 had a mix, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The movement to convert the rest of the country's death investigators from coroners to medical examiners is waning, a casualty of coroners' political might in their communities and the additional costs needed to pay for medical examiners' expertise.
The push is now to better train coroners and give them greater independence from other government agencies.
"When you try to remove them, you run into a political wall," said Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen, a former medical examiner for the city of Milwaukee and the author of "Death Investigation in America: Coroners, Medical Examiners, and the Pursuit of Medical Certainty."
"You can't kill them, so you have to help train them," he added.
There wouldn't be enough medical examiners to meet demand anyway, in part because of the time and expense it takes to become trained after medical school, said Dr. Kathryn Pinneri, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. She estimates there are about 750 full-time pathologists nationwide and about 80 job openings. About 40 forensic pathologists are certified in an average year, she said.
"There's a huge shortage," Pinneri said. "People talk about abolishing the coroner system, but it's really not feasible. I think we need to train coroners. That's what will improve the system."
Her association has called for coroners and medical examiners to function independently, without ties to other government or law enforcement agencies. A 2011 survey by the group found that 82% of the forensic pathologists who responded had faced pressure from politicians or the deceased person's relatives to change the reported cause or manner of death in a case.
Dr. Bennet Omalu, a former chief forensic pathologist in California, resigned five years ago over what he described as interference by the San Joaquin County sheriff to protect law enforcement officers.
"California has the most backward system in death investigation, is the most backward in forensic science and in forensic medicine," Omalu testified before the state Senate Governance and Finance Committee in 2018.
San Joaquin County has since separated its coroner duties from the sheriff's office.
The Golden State is one of three states that allow sheriffs to also serve as coroners, and all but 10 of California's 58 counties combine the offices. Legislative efforts to separate them have failed at least twice, most recently this year.
AB 1608, spearheaded by state Assembly member Mike Gipson (D-Carson), cleared that chamber but failed to get enough votes in the Senate.
"We thought we had a modest proposal. That it was a first step," said Robert Collins, who advocated for the bill and whose 30-year-old stepson, Angelo Quinto, died after being restrained by Antioch police in December 2020.
The Contra Costa County coroner's office, part of the sheriff's department, blamed Quinto's death on "excited delirium," a controversial finding sometimes used to explain deaths in police custody. The finding has been rejected by the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization.
Lawmakers "didn't want their names behind something that will get the sheriffs against them," Collins said. "Just having that opposition is enough to scare a lot of politicians."
The influential California State Sheriffs' Association and the California State Coroners Association opposed the bill, describing the "massive costs" to set up stand-alone coroner offices.
Many Illinois counties also said they would shoulder a financial burden under similar legislation introduced last year by state Rep. Maurice West, a Democrat. His more sweeping bill would have replaced coroners with medical examiners.
Rural counties, in particular, complained about their tight budgets and killed his bill before it got a committee hearing, he said.
"When something like this affects rural areas, if they push back a little bit, we just stop," West said.
Proponents of overhauling the system in Washington state — where in small, rural counties, the local prosecutor doubles as the coroner — faced similar hurdles.
The King County Medical Society, which wrote the legislation to divorce the two, said the system created a conflict of interest. But small counties worried they didn't have the money to hire a coroner.
So, lawmakers struck a deal with the counties to allow them to pool their resources and hire shared contract coroners in exchange for ending the dual role for prosecutors by 2025. The bill, HB 1326, signed last year by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, also requires more rigorous training for coroners and medical examiners.
"We had some hostile people that we talked to that really just felt that we were gunning for them, and we absolutely were not," Belcher said. "We were just trying to figure out a system that I think anybody would agree needed to be overhauled."
This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
America has been through a tough time. A national election separated friends and family, divided churches and took over our media. We’ve been intoxicated with poisonous rhetoric and toxic street gatherings that led to more division, injuries and even death.
Americans horrifically viewed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and said we aren’t going to take that anymore.
Over 762,000 people have died from Covid-19 in America. Over 47 million of us have been sick. Families who have buried loved ones don’t need convincing about the realities of Covid-19. Americans who have spent weeks in hospital intensive care units know they are fortunate to be alive. However, in the midst of America’s pandemic nightmare, Americans have debated with each other over vaccinations, masks, school and business closures. We have watched our businesses suffer. Our government’s finances have been further strained to supply money to hurting unemployed people.
Americans watched our departure from Afghanistan in horror. We argued among ourselves about how we should have left, the timing of our departure, and whether we should have left at all.
We continue to struggle with racism in America. People who have experienced it know the reality. At all levels of society we must rise above any and all words or actions that denigrate others.
We continue to have other crises impacting our nation. People pouring over our border illegally, an ongoing drug epidemic, homelessness, rising costs of medical treatment and insurance, unaffordable college tuition, unaffordable housing and unaffordable and sometimes unavailable groceries. Americans are now facing the fire of growing inflation. Groceries are becoming even more unaffordable for poor Americans. The cost of living adjustment coming for America’s retirees in January, which is reported to be 5.9 percent, might buy a small bag of groceries, maybe.
America has gone through a tough time, maybe better said, we are going through a tough time. This is why we desperately need Thanksgiving.
In November 1621, after the Pilgrims’ first corn harvest proved successful, Governor William Bradford organized a celebratory feast and invited a group of the fledgling colony’s Native American allies, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit. Now remembered as American’s "first Thanksgiving" — although the Pilgrims themselves may not have used the term at the time — the festival lasted for three days.
That first brutal winter, most of the colonists remained on board the Mayflower ship, where they suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease. Only half of the Mayflower’s original passengers and crew lived to see their first New England spring. In March, the remaining settlers moved ashore, where they received an astonishing visit from a member of the Abenaki tribe who greeted them in English.
Several days later, he returned with another Native American, Squanto. Squanto taught the Pilgrims, weakened by malnutrition and illness, how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple trees, catch fish in the rivers and avoid poisonous plants. He also helped the settlers forge an alliance with the Wampanoag, a local tribe, which would endure for more than 50 years and tragically remains one of the sole examples of harmony between European colonists and Native Americans according to History.com.
The early settlers who came to America suffered hardships that few Americans can comprehend. In the midst of so much death, sickness and starvation they found a way to stop and express gratitude. The friendship and humanitarian aid given to them by native Americans stand out as to what really makes America great.
We all need to learn from the first Thanksgiving. This year maybe we all could take time to be grateful, and do something to help each other.
Dr. Glenn Mollette is a syndicated American columnist and author of American Issues, Every American Has An Opinion and ten other books. He is read in all 50 states. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily representative of any other group or organization.
This article is the sole opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of The Sentinel. We welcome comments and views from our readers. Submit your letters to the editor or commentary on a current event 24/7 to editor@oursentinel.com.
"But I literally had no idea what had happened," she said. "And, for days, I was trying to put the pieces together."
She knew she had gone to a Sacramento, California, bar and restaurant with a group of people, and she remembered drinking there and being left alone with the man she’d later identify as her rapist. But not much else.
Memories she couldn't summon that first morning gradually came into focus over days and weeks, she said. The emerging details included what the man had been wearing, and the way he shoved her against the bar. One week after the attack, she reported the crime to the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department.
Then, in the days after making the report, another wave of memories surfaced — she recalled, vividly, that the man had raped her and had a weapon.
"I knew that there was a gun at my neck, at my back," she said. "It was just clear."
The detectives gave her a hard time, she said, when she called to report that she had remembered that her attacker had a gun. The Sacramento detectives assigned to Walker's case didn’t seem to understand why she couldn’t remember all the details right away.
"I felt like I was just extremely cross-examined on the phone. Like, 'Why didn’t you remember a gun? That's, like, a really important thing.'"
Sexual assault survivors say interactions with law enforcement can be so intense, and so unsympathetic, that they add secondary trauma. Reporting a rape can be especially traumatic when officers cast doubt on victims’ stories.
But it doesn't have to be, say scientists and scholars of criminal justice. If police gain a deeper understanding of what’s going on in the brain during and after a rape, they can change the way they approach rape cases and avoid making survivors feel blamed or disbelieved.
Scientists who study trauma and memory say it's common for sexual assault survivors — as well as survivors of other serious traumas — to be unable to recall an attack fully. They might remember certain facts but not others, or struggle to recall events in the correct sequence.
When law enforcement officers aren't aware of the neuroscience of trauma, or have no training to deal with it, there’s a tendency to dismiss or disbelieve victims who experience memory gaps, according to scholars and advocates for sexual assault survivors.
"There’s a real danger when investigators are asking people for information that was never encoded or has been lost," said Harvard University psychologist Jim Hopper. "They can stress out the victim, leave them feeling misunderstood, incompetent, not wanting to further engage with the investigation."
Walker's alleged perpetrator was never arrested. And she's still frustrated with the way detectives put pressure on her to remember details during the investigation.
The Brain in Survival Mode
When confronted with a crisis, the brain often activates its "fight, flight or freeze" response. In these scenarios, the brain’s "defense circuitry" takes over, explained Hopper. The prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for logical decision-making, is no longer in control and, instead, the areas of the brain responsible for scanning for danger take charge.
"And that's what people are running on" when trauma happens, Hopper said.
Some people respond by mentally "dissociating," or disconnecting from their physical selves. That survival response affects the ability to absorb what’s happening around them, Hopper said.
Studies on memory and recall during a traumatic event describe two types of details: central and peripheral. Central details are those that capture our attention and evoke emotions in the moment, such as a location. Peripheral details are those that a survivor might not have been paying attention to during the crisis, such as something the perpetrator said or whether other people were present. Central details tend to be stored more reliably and for longer than peripheral details.
Sometimes survivors are unable to answer what might seem like a simple question if it involves a peripheral detail like the color of the attacker’s shirt. And Hopper said that can make officers suspicious.
Hopper, who gives legal testimony in sexual assault cases, said victims are often held to unfair standards, even compared with other trauma survivors.
"Every day in courtrooms around the country, [defense attorneys] attack and question the credibility of victims of sexual assault for having the same kind of memories that soldiers have for their combat experiences," he said.
Victim advocates and criminal justice scholars say it’s important for detectives to be open to anything a survivor might say, whenever they say it — even if those details were not available in an initial report — because the information survivors provide later can be helpful for solving the crime.
Maintaining an Open Mind
Nicole Monroe, a police detective in Elk Grove, a suburb of Sacramento, said she and some of her colleagues have gotten additional education on brain science, and it has changed the way they approach sexual assault cases.
Monroe tells victims she works with that more memories will continue to surface in the days, weeks and even months to come.
"Smells will come back. Sights will come back. When you think of these things, give me a call and let me know, so that it can be added,” Monroe said. "Because little things like that are going to make a difference."
Traditionally, law enforcement officers are trained to conduct an interrogation that may involve drawing out specific details, usually in chronological order.
"The expectation is someone is supposed to come in, sit down, they’re supposed to be ready to talk, they’re supposed to know what to talk about," said Carrie Hull, a former detective with the Ashland Police Department in southern Oregon. "They're going to tell you what happened to them from the beginning, through the middle, and then the end. That is a very traditional understanding."
Hull is now a consultant for police departments, and part of her work involves advocating for the adoption of a technique known as Forensic Experiential Trauma Interviewing, or FETI. The training can help law enforcement learn how to ask questions differently: with empathy, patience and an informed understanding of how a traumatized brain makes memories and recalls them. Training in the technique is available through an online course, but it’s not a mandatory requirement for most police departments.
People who take Hull's course learn specific strategies for helping someone resurface a relevant memory that he or she may not have had access to when they first walked into the interview room. Hull said FETI discourages counterproductive practices such as paraphrasing, changing the victim’s words, interrupting or giving advice.
Hull said the overarching goal of trauma interviewing is to first "collect the dots, then connect the dots." In other words, simply interview the victim about what happened. The sharper, more aggressive investigative tactics can wait.
There isn’t research proving that law enforcement departments who take this training solve more rape cases. But victim advocates and scholars said it's a best practice that could make working with police a more positive experience for victims and, eventually, help bring more perpetrators to justice.
"If I had my way, every one of them would be doing this," said Dave Thomas, a program officer with the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Annie Walker is still struggling to recover from her sexual assault, but it's complicated because she’s also healing from the way law enforcement handled her case. She said both police officers and survivors need more education on the way trauma affects memory.
She said if survivors knew what to expect in terms of memory issues, it wouldn’t be so frustrating. "They need to feel like the way that things are happening in their mind is normal. Normal for them."
This story is from a partnership that includes CapRadio, NPR and KHN.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
