Problems with Bringing the Deceased into the Legal Process of Forensic Autopsy

Abstract

This research consists purposes were 1. to investigate the concepts, theories, principles, and history of the legal process for conducting an inquest and autopsy on a deceased person 2. to conduct a comparative study of the relevant legal provisions in Thailand and other countries 3. to analyze the legal issues concerning the current legal measures in Thailand and 4. to propose recommendations for the development and improvement of laws related to the legal process for conducting an inquest and autopsy on a deceased person in Thailand. is a qualitative research study conducted through the examination of various relevant documents, such as textbooks, laws, court judgments, academic articles and related research studies. The data collected from these documents were then analyzed using content analysis. The research found that 1) forensic autopsy concepts and theories emphasize finding truth from physical evidence, primarily based on postmortem changes theory 2) Thailand's forensic autopsy process uses the police system, while other countries have diverse systems such as the Coroner system in England, Medical Examiner system in the USA, and Judge system in Germany, which emphasize specialization and independence of key responsible parties 3) Thai law does not mandate autopsies for unidentified natural deaths, making identification difficult. There are also issues with the expertise of general practitioners conducting autopsies, limited rights of relatives to inspect and doctors exercising discretion without circumstantial evidence, leading to incomplete and unreliable diagnoses, as well as unclear responsibility for the final opinion in the case file and 4) recommendations include legal provisions for autopsies of unidentified bodies for identification, requiring general practitioner reports to be certified by forensic pathologists, increasing relatives' rights to request re-investigation or re-autopsy, limiting doctors' diagnoses to pathological conditions without encroaching on criminal diagnoses, and clearly designating the investigating officer as the person responsible for the final opinion in the law.