2026 Webinar Series: Reading the Death Record — Autopsy Reports, Toxicology, and Medical Records in LE-Related or Custodial Death

In law enforcement-involved or custodial death cases, the official record is composed of several distinct documents — the medicolegal death investigation report, the autopsy report, toxicology results, and medical records. Each is produced by a different part of the system, in a different language, for different purposes. Together, they should tell a coherent story about how and why a person died.

This webinar cuts through the clinical language and institutional framing to give NACOLE members a practical, working knowledge of the four document types most central to custodial or LE-involved death cases (including officer-involved shootings).

Attendees will learn:

• What the medicolegal death investigator's report is, who produces it, and which sections are most critical in custodial death cases — including antemortem events, hospital and medical intervention, body and scene description, and antemortem specimens.
• How to understand the autopsy report: the document structure, external and internal examinations, and the opinion section, where the cause and manner of death are formally stated. The distinction between cause and manner — and why conflating them is one of the most common and consequential errors in oversight work — is addressed directly.
• A framework to critically evaluate toxicology finding (among the most misused evidence in custodial death cases): what the numbers mean in context and why specimen collection timing matters.
• What medical records (often the most revealing and underutilized documents in custodial death investigations ) to request and how to request them, how to read records in chronological sequence, what gaps and late entries look like, and how to identify clinical findings that contradict the institutional account of events.

No single document tells the complete story. Throughout the webinar, we will discuss how the investigative report, autopsy, toxicology, and medical records interact. Red flags that only become visible when all four are read together will be identified.

Attendees will receive a one-page reference guide summarizing key questions and red flags for each document type, with presenter contact information.