Concordance Rate for the Identification of Distant Entrance Gunshot Wounds of the Back by Experienced Forensic Pathologists Examining Only Images of Autopsies |
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| Authors: | Michael Heninger M.D. |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Fulton County Medical Examiner's Center, Atlanta, GA;2. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA |
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| Abstract: | The images of 66 gunshot entrance wounds with a defect on the back, a bullet in the body, hemorrhage along the wound track, and logical certainty that it was an entrance wound were collected from the files of a moderately busy medical examiner's office. Participants numbering 22 board‐certified forensic pathologists viewed a single digital archival image of each of the 66 entrance wounds randomly mixed with 74 presumptive exit wounds to determine whether they were entrance or exit wounds. The concordance rate for correctly identifying the 66 logically known entrance wounds was 82.8% with a range from 58% to 97%. This pilot study was conducted to provide an evidence‐based approach to the interpretation of the direction of gunshot wounds by reviewing pathologists with access only to archival photographs, and it is not a measure of the accuracy to distinguish entrance from exit wounds when given all of the circumstances. |
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| Keywords: | forensic science death investigation gunshot wounds admissibility of evidence evidentiary standard expert testimony |
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