State of South Carolina |
Coroner: Harry
O. Harman |
| Contact: telephone: 803-359-8439 telephone after-hours: above number forwards to Lexington County "central dispatch" fax: 803-785-8492 e-mail: coroner@lex-co.com |
Personnel: |
| General:
The coroner of Lexington County is an elected county official who serves four-year terms, coroner's election coinciding with the election of state governor. Though many have law enforcement backgrounds and are required to take continuing education annually, there are no strict educational qualifications. The county coroner is the only county official having the authority to arrest the county sheriff. In the event, for whatever reason, the county sheriff cannot fulfill his duties, the county coroner takes over those duties as acting sheriff until either a special election is held or the governor names a new sheriff. Only our state governor can remove any county coroner from office. Should the office be suddenly vacated, the governor may appoint an acting coroner until a special election can be held to elect a new coroner. The coroner is absolutely empowered to investigate deaths through whatever means are necessary, including inquests before a coroner's jury, access to law enforcement investigatory information, and the ordering of postmortem examinations of the dead body, autopsies to be performed by independent cooperating pathologists. The pathologists at Lexington Medical Center are the primary co-operating pathology group, and the group in Newberry are secondary. Determination of "cause of death" and "manner of death" often has hugely important legal & monetary implications to a family & to society. See Dr. Shaw's discussion HERE. A review of 2006 data showed that, of the 189 coroner-ordered autopsies, only 15% of cases took over 60 days to finalize (2.2% of coroner's call volume). Eleven took over 90 days. We are well aware that financial matters such as life insurance may not be settled until a final autopsy report allows issuance of a death certificate. Some cases are very complicated. Suppose a preliminary autopsy diagnosis resulted in a large life insurance payment that allowed a family to buy something very expensive. Then, suppose that subsequent investigative, toxicology and autopsy findings changed the final autopsy diagnosis & manner of death into one which the life insurance would NOT have paid on. The result would be demands for return of the money to the insurance company and possibly a nasty law suit against the family which caused large legal expenses. |
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Lexington County
Coroners, from present back to 1805: |
| Forensic link |
| (posted April 2002; latest update 22 March 2008) |