It appears to be a very difficult task to determine if a body found in water was an accidental or intentional drowning, or if the decedent was dead before immersion. The article cited below is lengthy, detailed, and possibly disturbing for some of us to read.
Extracts from
National Center for Biotechnology Information BBM
"...Water-related deaths often are prematurely, and at times subconsciously, labeled as accidental drownings. While this is often the case, the presumption that a body recovered from within or near a body of water is an accidental drowning can hinder timely recognition of indicators of foul play and other important clues present in or around the death scene (
3,
4). This, in turn, may ultimately lead to false conclusions regarding cause and manner of death and adverse adjudication.
Furthermore, failure to recognize certain scene attributes and bodily findings suggestive of homicide can hamper further investigation including interviews with witnesses and persons of interest or apprehension of suspects. The investigation of deaths associated with natural bodies of water can be particularly challenging due to the characteristics inherent in an environment that are constantly changing such as in lakes, rivers, and oceans. It is also important to recognize that not all water-related deaths can be presumed to be drownings and other factors such as water and weather temperature extremes, drug intoxication, or natural disease may be sufficient enough to be the cause of death and otherwise preclude drowning.
The investigation of the submerged body often requires the coordinated efforts and expertise of multiple agencies, especially when dealing with natural bodies of water. To varying degrees, those commonly involved include water-based emergency technical responders, law enforcement, medical first responders, medicolegal death investigators, forensic scientists, and forensic pathologists.
Suicidal and homicidal drownings represent a smaller but significant segment of drowning deaths. Suicidal drownings are uncommon, and the percentages of all suicides vary between less than 1% to nearly 9% of all manners of drowning, depending upon the geographic location and access to water, with lakes, oceans, and rivers the more common locales (
12–
16). Older Caucasian men tend to be the typical decedent in suicidal drowning deaths; however, a significant proportion of women utilize this less violent method of death (
The many alterations conferred by postmortem decomposition add another layer of difficulty in regard to the determination of the cause of death, time of death, and location of death in any death and especially in bodies recovered from water..."
Investigation of Drowning Deaths: A Practical Review
