TITLE 31

COUNTIES AND COUNTY LAW

CHAPTER 28

CORONER

31-2811.  definitions. As used in this chapter:

(1)  "Burial" means the interment or entombment of dead human bodies in any manner.

(2)  "Certified" means a procedure by which a third party gives written assurance that a person, product, process, or service conforms to specific requirements.

(3)  "Coroner" means an elected or appointed official whose duty is to conduct and oversee medicolegal death investigations, usually for a single county, and ensure certification of cause and manner of death.

(4)  "Cremation" means the reduction of human remains to bone fragments in a certified crematory by means of incineration.

(5)  "Human remains" means a lifeless human body or such parts of the human body or the bones thereof from the state of which it reasonably may be concluded that death occurred or the body of a deceased person, including remains following the process of cremation, alkaline hydrolysis, or natural organic reduction. Human remains also include the body in any stage of decomposition, including but not limited to skeletal remains.

(6)  "Manner of death" means a classification system based on the circumstances under which death occurred, including accident, homicide, natural, suicide, and undetermined.

(7)  "Medicolegal death investigator" means a person who conducts a medicolegal death investigation.

(8)  "Medicolegal death investigation" means a formal inquiry and examination, that may include fluid extraction, into the circumstances surrounding the death of a human being where investigative information is considered with autopsy findings and adjunctive studies, if performed, to determine the cause and manner of death.

History:

[31-2811, added 2025, ch. 96, sec. 7, p. 514.]