Autopsy results to determine the cause of Michael Jackson’s death won’t be quickly forthcoming. From the LA Times LA NOW blog:
Results of the autopsy could take weeks and will include, as is common practice, toxicology to determine what drugs if any were in Jackson’s system.
Weeks? That surprises me. Have police procedural authors been wrong for fifty years? Typically any delay in getting those results in books has been attributed to a backlog of subjects; in the case of a high-profile death like this the novelists have all suggested a quick turnaround.
Yes, this is a macabre thought; my mind works that way sometimes.
Could be.
On any of the CSI series, they collect evidence, take it back to the lab, and seem to process it the same day. I can see that with fingerprints and blood typing but some of the other stuff seems too complicated for analysis that gives results so quickly. Over the last couple of years, I’ve read comments and stuff from real forensic experts that say that they laugh (or get angry) at the impression that you can get answers that fast.
Certainly with a really high profile case as this is, the labs are going to have to be veeeery careful because someone is bound to dispute the results and will sue to get them overturned. (sigh) We do live in such a litigious society.
Maybe they’re saying weeks so that they don’t have to deal with the gazillion calls that want to know isitdoneyet? isitdoneyet? isitdoneyet? isitdoneyet?
In this case, Karan, I don’t think that would cut down the amount of calls at all at all.
and then … “the rest of the story”
I’m involved with the local police department as part of a community policing program. You should hear the police, especially the folks in the lab (which I toured as part of a “citizen’s police academy”), on the subject of CSI etc.
You don’t actually BELIEVE the stuff you see on TV? I didn’t think so.