Final Reckoning: Unlike TV dramas, real forensic cases don't end in an hour

摘要

Shortly before midnight on March 19, a heavyset 24-year-old man was standing outside a Mexican restaurant along West Arrow Highway in San Dimas, Calif., when a brawl broke out. No one is sure how the fight started in this small, affluent city east of Pasadena, but it came to a tragic end. The young man wound up on a stainless steel table in the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office, dead from multiple stab wounds. Like other victims of violent crime, as well as those who die inexplicably, the San Dimas man was sent to the coroner to be examined for cause of death. Details of such fatalities can become evidence critical to prosecuting-or exonerating-defendants in subsequent trials. The Los Angeles office performs about 6000 of these autopsies each year. One of nearly 4000 such facilities in the United States, it is second in size only to New York's.