Missouri-Illinois state line muddles jurisdiction in coroner cases

After a recent motorcycle wreck in Union County, Ill., paramedics transported the seriously injured victim across the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge to Saint Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau. The victim was pronounced dead at the hospital, leaving both the Union County and Cape Girardeau County coroner's offices wondering who had jurisdiction over the death.

It's not a new question.

Because the two states' laws contradict one another on when a county coroner or medical examiner is responsible for conducting a death investigation, officials in both states struggle to decide what to do when someone is fatally injured in Southern Illinois and transported to a Cape Girardeau hospital.

The coroner's role in a death includes determining the cause and manner of death, arranging an autopsy if necessary, notifying next of kin and sometimes testifying in court if the death is a homicide.

Cape Girardeau County Coroner John Clifton cited the 2007 shooting death of Charles A. Caldwell, killed during a robbery of the Brown Bag II video store in McClure, Ill., saying in that case Cape Girardeau County paid for the autopsy and handled other details associated with the murder.

According to Missouri law, while a death certificate must be filed in the county where someone is pronounced dead, the coroner or medical examiner from the county where the deceased came from is responsible for investigating the circumstances of the death.

The law was to prevent taxpayers in one county from eating the expense of autopsies and devoting resources to investigating something that happened somewhere else, said Eddie Wilson, executive director of the Missouri Coroners and Medical Examiners Association.

"The law was designed to draw a line in the sand," Wilson said.

While Illinois' law briefly mirrored Missouri's more than a decade ago, it now states that only the coroner or medical examiner in the county where the person is declared dead has jurisdiction over the case.

With neighboring states, the difference in laws can create confusion, especially when most Southern Illinois cases involving life-threatening injuries are automatically taken to the trauma center at Saint Francis.

"It's a problem that needs to be worked out," Clifton said.

The problem isn't confined to Southern Illinois; coroners in Missouri counties that border Arkansas have similar disagreements, Wilson said.

"It's a problem across state lines," he said.

Champaign County, Ill., Coroner Duane Northrup, president of the Illinois Coroners and Medical Examiners Association, said because his region's only trauma center is in his county, he typically receives a lot of cases from other counties.

"It may not seem fair on its face," Northrup said.

Northrup said gathering information about a death would be easier for a coroner working in the state where the death actually occurred, regardless of where person was before they were brought to the hospital.

Wilson disagreed, saying a Missouri coroner would have no real authority in an Illinois county.

"A coroner in another state doesn't even have access to the investigative files," Wilson said.

Clifton recalled a case where a man died at a Cape Girardeau hospital from injuries he sustained while working in a factory in Chester, Ill. That type of situation required Clifton to go to the factory in Illinois and interview witnesses to rule out any suspicion of foul play before he could make an official ruling on the death.

Clifton said he expects the problem will come up again in the future and wishes there were some way of resolving it.

Northrup said that when Illinois' law was briefly changed to be similar to Missouri's, the result was disastrous, with even more confusion about who was responsible for what cases.

"It was basically such a fiasco that the law was changed back in less than a year," Northrup said.

Northrup pointed out that the presence of a hospital in a community generates a lot of revenue for that town from relatives and friends of patients spending money there.

"What it really comes down to is money," he said.

Both Northrup and Wilson agreed that a "gentleman's agreement" is the only way of settling the jurisdictional dispute.

"It has to be a hand-in-hand deal," Wilson said.

bdicosmo@semissourian.com

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