Justice Scalia's unexamined death points to a problem

Scalia’s unexamined death will add to the conspiracy theory industrial complex. It didn’t need to be so, especially since Scalia’s pre-existing medical conditions make it likely that his death was a natural one.

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Why is it that in a nation with the best medical technology in the world, we are still allowing a law enforcement official and a judge on the end of a telephone line to declare someone dead and pronounce the manner of death as natural without an autopsy?…

His demise was, by definition, a sudden and unexpected death, and those are the types of deaths that fall under a coroner or medical examiner’s jurisdiction. Though John Poindexter, the owner of the ranch and the man who found Scalia’s body, later stated that the pillow was against the headboard and “not over his face,” there still should have been a death scene investigation by trained personnel. And there should have been an autopsy by a board-certified forensic pathologist.

Instead, we have a marshal and the property owner calling up a justice of the peace, and everyone agreeing that there must have been “no foul play.”

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