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64 Medico-Legal J. 3 (1996)

handle is hein.journals/medlgjr64 and id is 1 raw text is: MEDICO-LEGAL JOURNAL Founded 1901 1996 Vol. 64 Part One Editorial When a postmortem is performed on a body thought to have died in suspicious circumstances the pathologist, after documenting the injuries, has to decide on the mechanism or mechanisms that have caused those injuries. They then must form an opinion if the injury was due to self infliction, accident or if it was of a homicidal nature. Suicidal or self inflicted injuries tend to be found in specific areas of the body - the so called elective sites. Accidental injuries may be single or multiple and their designation as accidental depends on a knowledge of the events surrounding their infliction. Homicidal injuries are commonly multi- ple and in sites not associated with self infliction. The distinction between these three groups of injuries, as set out above, would appear to be quite simple and when the injuries fall clearly into one group or another the distinctions are not difficult. Difficulties in interpretation arise when the mechanisms of an injury, or a group of injuries, lie on the boundaries between the three possibilities. It is the differentiation of a single accidental injury from a single homicidal injury that poses the greatest problems for it is this decision that may mean the difference between a charge of murder or manslaughter or possibly no criminal charge at all. In attempting to understand the mechanism by which an injury was inflicted it is important to know as much of the events surrounding the infliction of the injury as possible. In the absence of this information the interpretation of the mechanism of an injury may be extremely difficult and can at best be speculation based on experience. This is particularly true in two areas of Forensic Medicine, the single head injury in a child and the single stab wound. In the former there are often no independent witnesses, in the latter the witnesses may give conflicting stories. The pathologist may initially be asked to form an opinion about the mechanism of an injury based on the post mortem examination alone. He may request, and be given, statements from many witnesses who record their own version of the events. While each case is different the common thread appears to be that few of these witnesses will agree on the forensically important facts for establishing the mechanism of the injury (Were the victim and assailant stand- ing? Were they face to face? Did the victim charge the assailant? etc) although there may be agreement on the general situation at the time the injury was inflicted. Can the pathologist rely on these statements? It would seem not since

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