This article is part of “Lost Rites,” a series on America’s failed death notification system.
A Mississippi coroner’s office under fire for burying people in pauper’s graves without their families’ knowledge has released a policy on death notifications that is unsigned and undated, making it impossible to know whether the guidance was in effect while the office was handling the botched cases.
The policy includes provisions that, if they were in effect over the past two years, appear to have been disregarded by Hinds County coroner’s office investigators.
The coroner’s office has not responded to questions about the policy, which the county provided to NBC News this month in response to a public records request.
Revelations about the failed notifications, documented by NBC News, have stoked widespread public outrage and calls for a federal investigation.
Coroners are required under Mississippi law to “make reasonable efforts” to contact the family of a person who has died, and if the body remains unclaimed after five days, they are allowed to seek a pauper’s burial. But in the deaths of Dexter Wade, Marrio Moore and Jonathan David Hankins, the Hinds County coroner’s office did not notify relatives that they had died. After going unclaimed for months, those bodies were buried in a pauper’s field on the grounds of the county jail work farm, their graves marked only by a number. The traumatized families say they would have claimed the men’s bodies if they’d known they were dead.
The Hinds County coroner’s office has said the police in Jackson, where the men died, were responsible for the failed notifications. The police have said it was the coroner’s job. In response to the uproar, the police department adopted its first death notification policy in November. The six-page policy is dated and signed by Chief Joseph Wade.
The coroner’s office’s policy, two pages long, addresses various aspects of the death notification process…
Read the full article here