Legal Terms of Death
The official classifications are natural, accidental, homicidal, suicidal, and undetermined.
What is the manner of death?
This is the first step in the biological process of death.
What is that the heart stop beating, so blood is no longer pumped to the body?
These are the number of hours the fly species will need to grow in that particular life stage.
What are the degree hours?
This is the definition of post-mortem interval.
What is the time between death and discovery?
This is the third step in the fly life cycle.
What is 2nd Instar?
When someone is publicly hanged, this is the hanging itself.
What is the cause of death?
This is cellular demolition, when the cell breaks down and the membrane ruptures.
What is autolysis?
These build-up over time, like a species' age.
What are accumulated degree hours?
Victim A who died on Christmas was found by her neighbor on January 2nd, 2018. This is her post-mortem interval.
What is seven days or a week?
This is where oviposition occurs first.
What is the head region?
If the cause of death is a fatal shot to the femoral artery, this is the mechanism of death.
What is blood loss?
This is the rate that the body cools for the first 12 hours after death in degrees Celsius.
What is 0.78 degrees per hour?
This is the typical amount of hours it takes a fly to develop from eggs to 1st Instar.
What is less than 24 hours?
What is 21 hours?
What is 16 hours?
What is 18 hours?
This entomological data is used to determine the time of death and post-mortem interval of the deceased.
What is the accumulated degree hours of a species of fly?
These are the two major insect families of interest in entomology.
What are beetles (coleopterans) and flies (dipterans)?
Death at the scene of a large fire is most likely this mechanism of death.
What is suffocation or asphyxiation from carbon dioxide?
Rigor mortis, or the stiffening of the body, progresses from here to the larger muscle groups, like the legs.
What is the smaller muscles groups of the face, jaw, and neck?
This is how I calculate the degree hours.
What is multiplying the average temperature that day by the insect's expected life development?
If the oldest stage of life found on the wife in Acitivity 11-7 was first instar, this would be her approximate PMI.
What is 1-2 days?
This is why insects are important to entomology.
What is the predictable growth rates of insects help determine the post-mortem interval?
In Romeo and Juliette, Juliette kills herself with poison to be with Romeo in the afterlife. This would be her cause, manner, and mechanism of death. *Be sure they are in that order!
What is poison, suicidal, and cardiac arrest?
This is when lividity first becomes noticeable on a corpse.
What is 2 hours after death?
This is how many accumulated degree hours the blowfly would have developed on September 20th in Activity 11-7.
What is 5,422 ADH?
In the Candi Roberts' case, this was her time of death.
What is sunrise on 7/21/2014 to sunset on 7/23/2014?
This is when many flies swarm an area and lay eggs at different times and places, but very rapidly.
What is an oviposition frenzy?