NC - Fatally Flawed: This states shoddy death investigations can miss murders

Across North Carolina, medical examiners fail to follow crucial investigative steps, raising questions about the accuracy of thousands of death rulings...

A Charlotte Observer investigation, entailing the most comprehensive analysis of state death rulings ever conducted, found that examiners regularly close cases without following recommended practices.

_They don’t go to death scenes in 90 percent of cases they investigate.

_In one of every nine deaths, they violate a state requirement to examine the bodies.

_When an elderly person dies, they’re even more likely to take shortcuts. Since 2001, more than 40 of the state’s counties went at least three years without a single autopsy on a person 75 or older.

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