r/askfuneraldirectors • u/Bell-Belle • 1d ago
Advice Needed (possible trigger) Question about the cause of death on death certificate...
My son unalived himself earlier this year. It happened in prison. He put a sheet around his neck. I just got the death certificate and it says, "hung himself with a rope around his neck". Is this proper verbiage? What happened to asphyxiation? Or....I dunno....this seems like street talk.
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u/Otherwise_Candy_8412 17h ago
Sometimes the coroners or ME’s can be crude in how they list that. I think they forget that this isn’t just something to enter on a screen, this is a document that the family will see and use for legal purposes.
The formal way of entering this would have been asphyxia due to hanging.
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u/Bell-Belle 16h ago
Can I have it rewritten? Who do I talk to
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u/Otherwise_Candy_8412 7h ago
I mean, you could contact the coroner or ME that signed it, but at least in my area, they won’t change it unless it’s a serious change requested.
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u/porterramses 1d ago
Is asphyxiation under cause of death? Hanging would be Manner of death. Condolences on this tragic loss.
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u/hockstutter Apprentice 14h ago
I’m so sorry you are having to ask these questions. Please accept my condolences. I’ve always seen manner of death as sucde and cause of death as asphyxiation.
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u/LogisticalProblem 12h ago
Here they often will put the cause of death in cases like this as “asphyxiation” and then in “contributing factors” or “other” section they will put exactly how.
Another example “blunt force trauma” and then “car accident”
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u/jasilucy 9h ago
This doesn’t seem right at all. For one it is ‘hanged’ not hung for that context. It would also be recorded as asphyxiation potentially secondary to blunt force trauma.
I would speak to the coroners office to speak to the actual coroner to discuss this. It may have been a deputy that recorded this.
So sorry for your loss.
It really depends on which country you’re from as to what advice can be provided accurately.
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u/No-Enthusiasm-7527 7h ago
I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have to address this on top of everything you’ve been through. Death certificates are supposed to list the pathological reason, not a description of an act. Asphyxiation may not even be the cause of death. It could be cervical spinal fracture. In the event of asphyxiation, it usually appears as “asyphyxiation due to ligature compression” or sometimes variation, or sometimes “due to hanging”. Sometimes “cerebral hypoxia” is listed first, then the others. I’m not sure of the laws in different states, but in both states I’ve been licensed in, autopsies are required when a death occurs in a correctional facility for oversight and accountability. This may or may not be required in your state. An autopsy report should have the cause listed if one was performed.
The first step here is calling the medical examiner or coroner’s office and inquiring if one was performed (if you don’t already know) and asking for clarification about the verbiage written on the death certificate. If one was performed, ask for the death certificate to be corrected with autopsy findings. If one wasn’t performed, the next step is calling the Chief Medical Examiner overseeing the locality and reporting a concern to see if an investigation is needed. One concern I see is that the term rope was used in place of “ligature” which would technically include a sheet. Rope is incorrect if it was a sheet. They are both types of ligatures, but they are not interchangeable. This raises a red flag to me. Again, I am sorry you are dealing with this.
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u/Golbez89 Funeral Assistant 1d ago
Location might be helpful. Some states have a temporary death certificate before the final one is issued. This is not medical verbiage, nor even grammatically correct. No one has ever hung themselves, but many people have hanged themselves.