Field Trip: Hillsborough Medical Examiner Office

-----"I saw dead people”

I loved the fact that the Hillsborough Medical Examiner office was within two miles of the university. My friend Lou Lou and I were the last two to arrive to the presentation. Vernard Adams, the chief medical examiner, gave a great presentation, but spoke in a very low voice that made it difficult to hear the recording that I took that day. He stressed something that I thought would be obvious, but never thought about: Photographs of autopsies are not available to the public (even though I happened to see a photograph later on the tour). This came in effect after Dale Earnhart, the NASCAR race-car driver, was killed in an accident during the 2001 Daytona 500 race. Newspapers wanted photographs of the autopsy, but obviously the family objected to this. This introduced the Earnhart protection act, which prevented photograph autopsies to become public records. Written records of the autopsy are public records unless the case is under examination, like rape investigations or criminal investigations. Someone from the medical examiners office has to call the state attorneys office and get approval from the state attorney to determine if these are open to the public or not. Now you may get a different response if you ask the detectives handling the case. The police may not allow it to be a public record because it may interfere with investigations.

After the presentation Mr. Adams took us on a tour of the building. Our first stop was to see the clerical files room. This is where I accidentally managed to view a photo of an autopsy. With respect to the individual, I wont go into details about what I saw, but it reminded me of a prison photo only the subject was not alive. Each folder was organized with different color tabs to identify which ones were suicides, homicide’s natural death, drug related deaths etc. I was surprised to see that they had more suicide cases then homicides. As we continued the tour we saw a science lab that reminded me of the ones I saw in high-school and learned that the electric bill of this place was approximately $25,000 to keep fresh air circulating. Then we came to everyone’s favorite part: The Autopsy Room. We were originally told that were not allowed in the room because they were in progress of clearing the organs of one of the bodies; however, once we saw other classmates in the room we demanded to go in as well. The body we saw reminded me of a prop that didn’t even look real. Once I remembered that they clean the bodies and collect the organs, this made it easier to remember that this person was indeed real. Next we saw the fridge where multiple bodies were kept. The smell in this was unbearable. I literally had to hold my breath while in the room and could still smell it even after the door was closed. The tour ended with Mr. Adams explaining how much he loved his job because it’s always interesting.