Time Of Death In Homicide Investigation

The discovery of a dead body become a homicide case when during the preliminary investigation of police, it appears that there is a foul play involve in the nature of how the victim died. Homicide case is handled by homicide investigator. During homicide investigation, one of the important and primary part towards giving a victim justice he or she deserved is to find out the time he or she was killed. Because without such piece of information the case will go to nowhere. Therefore, in this paper I am going to discuss the importance of determining time of death in a homicide case and the method used in determining the time of death of a homicide victim.

During homicide investigation, homicide investigator work side by side with the forensic

When the body is already in the later stage of decomposition when it was discovered, the odds of medical examiner being able to tell the estimated time of death by his/her visual assessment is slim to none. The only way for a medical examiner to determine the time of death is to examine any trace of evidence found in the corpse. Example of evidence at such stage of corpse decomposition is the existence of insects living in the body. This is when the expertise of forensic entomologist come into play. Entomologists are scientists that studies all about insects. Entomologist expertise is very useful in aiding the medical examiner and homicide investigator to determine the victim’s time of death because they can identify the specific insect, the insect’s development as well as the season in which the victim’s death occurred (p.172). Another method that can aid the medical examiner and homicide investigators in finding out when the victim was killed is the help of forensics anthropologists. Forensics anthropologists are scientist who studies skeletons and human remains. The expertise of forensics anthropologist is very crucial when the body is discovered and already in the final stage of decomposition where the only way to find out the identity of the victim and the nature surrounding his or her death is by examining his or her skeleton or

It is a comparable to a base of jigsaw puzzle that once the estimated time of death is determined (especially in homicide case with no witness), it will open doors to finding out the identity of the person or people the victim was last seen alive which may then lead to finding out the suspect(s) in the killing, break an alibi or may even eliminate a suspect