Post mortem injuries

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kjh5475

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I know that during an autopsy a medical examiner is able to recognize injuries that have been inflicted after death. Would this include injuries that are inflicted immediately after death?

For example, if a murderer kills someone and wants to make it look like the victim was raped before she was killed, would it be possible to inflict injuries that were consistent with rape after the victim has died without these injuries raising suspicion during an autopsy? In other words, would the medical examiner, upon noticing these injuries, take for granted that they were inflicted before death?

Thanks for any help you can provide!
 

frimble3

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As far as I know (and I only know it from fiction and true-crime stories) the blood stops circulating at the time of death when the heart stops beating, so if the 'signs of injury' involved bleeding or bruising(which is bleeding under the skin) it would be assumed that they occured before death.
 
reigningcatsndogs

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Okay, I don't know if this helps, but according to my research, sperm live longer in a dead body than they would in someone who is alive. In a living person, motile sperm can be found in rape survivors for up to 24 hours, although the norm would be about 12 hours. Nonmotile sperm can hang around for two or three days. As they die off, the tails fall off leaving only the head, and these guys can hang around for up to seven days after intercourse. The thing is, the vagina produces chemicals that destroy the sperm. The minute the heart stops beating, the chemical is not produced, and so those little guys can survive a lot longer -- the degeneration process would be very much slower (up to a couple of weeks). The problem with this scenario is that the autopsy would have to be done long enough after the death so the ME could notice that hte sperms aren't breaking down. Also, if the attacker had had a vasectomy, wore a condom, or just had few or weak swimmers, it might not be picked up at all.

As for bruising (ecchymosis), it is possible to leave a mark on a dead body. Although the body is no longer pumping blood so it quickly settles to the lowest part of the body, a sufficient blow can damage blood vessels and cause blood to leak into the area of impact, although that requires a significant blow and is not easily seen. There may also be tearing, which an ME can certainly determine happened after death.

Please check further into this, with a doctor, ME or possibly even a lab tech. My sources are fairly reliable and have never steered me wrong yet, but I am not in any of these three professions. Just thought it might give you a starting point to do more looking.
 
GeorgeK

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reigningcatsndogs said:
Okay, I don't know if this helps, but according to my research, sperm live longer in a dead body than they would in someone who is alive. In a living person, motile sperm can be found in rape survivors for up to 24 hours, although the norm would be about 12 hours. Nonmotile sperm can hang around for two or three days. As they die off, the tails fall off leaving only the head, and these guys can hang around for up to seven days after intercourse. The thing is, the vagina produces chemicals that destroy the sperm. The minute the heart stops beating, the chemical is not produced, and so those little guys can survive a lot longer -- the degeneration process would be very much slower (up to a couple of weeks). The problem with this scenario is that the autopsy would have to be done long enough after the death so the ME could notice that hte sperms aren't breaking down. Also, if the attacker had had a vasectomy, wore a condom, or just had few or weak swimmers, it might not be picked up at all.

As for bruising (ecchymosis), it is possible to leave a mark on a dead body. Although the body is no longer pumping blood so it quickly settles to the lowest part of the body, a sufficient blow can damage blood vessels and cause blood to leak into the area of impact, although that requires a significant blow and is not easily seen. There may also be tearing, which an ME can certainly determine happened after death.

Please check further into this, with a doctor, ME or possibly even a lab tech. My sources are fairly reliable and have never steered me wrong yet, but I am not in any of these three professions. Just thought it might give you a starting point to do more looking.
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I'm a Urologist not a Pathologist, but this sounds spurious. Although there would be no immunoglobulins produced and the chemical production of enzymes that inhibit sperm would be stopped as well, sperm have a relatively narrow window of temperature tolerance and a corpse is not going to maintain body temperature. When doing a semenalysis, the results are only valid if a whole host of variables are controlled, one of which is maintaining the specimen at body temperature, not too high, and not too low.

Also tearing of skin while the person is alive causes bleeding both microscopically and macroscopically which presumably would be assessed at autopsy. If there is no blood pressure, then there is significantly less bleeding which rapidly drops to zero. That said, depending upon the circumstances of death and the timing involved, someone might be unconscious for a while before the heart stops. When butchering a pig, it will take a few minutes for it to bleed out (from the sticking of the heart or aorta) after it is rendered unmoving from the gunshot wound to the head.
 
reigningcatsndogs

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Sorry for being spurious. I related what it says in my forensics references and what I've been told by professionals, and offered it simply as a starting point for more potential creative possibilities and research, definitely not to mislead. I suggested talking to a professional, and there you are! Thanks for the clarification.
 
GeorgeK

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reigningcatsndogs said:
Sorry for being spurious. I related what it says in my forensics references and what I've been told by professionals, and offered it simply as a starting point for more potential creative possibilities and research, definitely not to mislead. I suggested talking to a professional, and there you are! Thanks for the clarification.
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I didn't mean to imply that you were trying to mislead, just that I think you were mislead. That happens to all of os sometime or another. Also, I'm not a medical examiner, so I might be wrong. I'm simply making deductions from what I know is true. What are your references if you don't mind?
 
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