Dr. Joanna Glengarry

For the majority of cases, there are things to discuss.

It isn't black and white from a pathology point of view.

When we go to the scene, it has multiple roles.

So it is putting the death in context, but not in terms of...

who the police are looking for in relation to who might have been involved in that death, that's a complete aside.

It's the scene and how it relates to the deceased person.

So are there factors at the scene that are going to alter how the body appears, how the injuries might appear?

Is there a specific object?

Is the person up against a bar heater?

And that explains why they've got

multiple parallel red lines on the body, that that's actually an artifact from the heater, not because someone's hit them with an unusual weapon with that pattern on.

So that can be really important in interpreting it.

And in many other cases, it's actually going to other scenes where the death is thought to be suspicious and it turns out not to be.

And we can interpret those post-mortem artifacts that might look really concerning to a lay person, but we can say, no, that's not a pool of blood.

It's related to processes that occur after death.

So we don't go in order to figure out whodunit like the clever TV pathologists do.

And I don't arrive before the police.

No.

That would be odd, and I should probably spend my time better.

From a pathologist's point of view, you'll get a better outcome.