ABSTRACT
Introduction .........................................................................................................216 Certification of Death .........................................................................................216 Manner of Death .................................................................................................217 An Overview of EDA ..........................................................................................218 The State of Mind of the Deceased ................................................................... 219 Psychological Autopsy ....................................................................................... 220 The Method or Means of Death ........................................................................ 222 The Scene(s) ........................................................................................................ 222 The Forensic Science and Medical Evidence .................................................. 224 Summary and Conclusion ................................................................................. 225 References ............................................................................................................ 226
It is estimated that there were 2.6 million deaths in 2013 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2013), with other countries such as Canada reporting approximately a quarter million (Demography Division, Statistics Canada 2013). Common reasons for death vary based on factors such as age (e.g., in the United States, accidental deaths are most common for those aged 1-44 years, compared with death due to illness for those 45 years and older; Minino 2013). In most cases, the reason a person dies is well understood. There are, however, times where we may know the cause of death (e.g., subdural hemorrhage due to blunt trauma injury), but the manner of death (e.g., accident, homicide) is unknown or equivocal (e.g., ambiguous, uncertain, questionable). Some authors suggest that between 5 and 20% of deaths examined for certification by a coroner or medical examiner are equivocal (see Botello et al. 2013; Porter and Wrightsman 2014). In these instances, those investigating the death engage in a process to determine manner of death; we refer to this as an equivocal death analysis (EDA).
