Assistant Medical Examiner, State of Maryland

[ Silence ] >> But this was -- this gentleman committed suicide by actually inserting a -- probably with some force, a meat thermometer through the skull into the brain. So when he arrived at the medical examiner's office there was still the meat thermometer was in place. My name is Melissa Brazzle [phonetic]. I am assistant medical examiner at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland. In a homicide we look for things like you said, bruising, abrasions, where are they located, what could have caused them, gunshot wounds, stab wounds, telling the difference between entrance and exit gunshot wounds, trying to determine what type of a knife may have caused the stab wound, things of that nature. This area is a place where detectives, attorneys, whoever's here to observe an autopsy or give additional information get the autopsy results, will observe the autopsy from up here. [ Silence ] So each of these rooms has 8 stations so we can do 8 autopsies in each room. One of my major duties here at the medical examiner's office is to perform autopsies, and to investigate deaths, particularly deaths that occur suddenly or unexpectedly. So on any given day I'll either be doing -- actually performing autopsies, or doing all of the things that go along with performing autopsies, so speaking with family, speaking with detectives, doing paperwork, writing reports, looking at lab results, medical records. In some cases they require photos be taken, so we start off with that. So we document everything externally, take photos, take evidence for the police, if they require that, make sure that that's all documented. And then we move to the internal part of the autopsy so the body's actually opened, and we look inside for any injuries or disease. And then we take all of that together to form our opinions about cause and manner of death, and write the written report, autopsy report. >> We've all seen the television shows, and I'd be remiss if I didn't ask how they compare to the actual job and what you're doing. >> They're not very realistic at all. I won't say that I don't enjoy the television shows as well, but they don't really portray my job. They like to show medical examiners always going to the scene. In some states and jurisdictions medical examiners do go to the scene. I do not often go to a scene, unless there's something of special concern about a case that they want a medical examiner at the scene to look at. We don't do it all that frequently anymore. So I'm not going to the scene a lot. And they show the medical examiner going to the scene and giving a time of death pretty much immediately when they get there. And that's one of the biggest inaccuracies. We can't often give even a reasonable estimate of the time of death. So in that sense television's doing a bit of disservice to the legal world in death investigation.