Investigation of murders is not difficult for the investigator if there are no special circumstances in the case. Nevertheless, the investigation of the crime scene, as well as the examination and exhumation of the corpse, must be carried out in accordance with the procedure established by law. In particular, it is necessary to draw up a protocol for inspection of the corpse.
Article 178 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation indicates the main points of the inspection of the body, and article 176 of the same code contains such grounds that allow you to inspect the scene of the incident, which will be discussed later.
For any investigative action, a document is drawn up : a protocol for examining the corpse and the scene of the incident. This is a procedural document that has legal force only if it is drawn up according to certain rules.
Investigator Activities
In order not to violate the procedural order that occurs when a crime is received, the investigator must perform the following actions:
- Inspect the crime scene, as well as ensure the protection of the territory where the murder was allegedly committed.
- To instruct the guards to establish witnesses of the murder, whose testimony may be important.
- Give instructions to provide assistance to victims.
- Clarify whether measures have been taken to detain suspects and ensure that negative consequences are prevented.
- Check the availability of the necessary tools in the investigative portfolio to carry out investigative actions on the spot.
First of all, the investigator draws up a protocol for examining the place of the corpse, that is, the place where the victim is directly located, and also finds out the situation and the location of objects around.
Types of killings
The highlights of the scene inspection are in the circumstances that occurred during the murder. The crime provided for by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation can be of various types. The main ones can be distinguished:
- A car accident or a railway accident (i.e. involving vehicles).
- Domestic murder.
- Mass murder with the presence of multiple corpses (for example, execution or terrorist act).
- Kill by negligence.
- Murder with dismemberment of a corpse.
It should be noted that in all of the above options, the investigator must draw up a protocol for examining the location of the corpse. In a single murder, or, more simply, in a murder, when the corpse is in its entirety directly in any one place, it is more convenient for the investigator to examine the murdered person. In the event that a dismemberment of the corpse occurred, it is necessary to find all its parts. In this case, the crime scene will be the one in which the last part of the body was found.
Corpse inspection
After the investigator inspected the scene of the incident, revealing all significant circumstances, he proceeds to inspect the body and draws up a protocol for examining the corpse.
A sample fill is presented below.
The sequence of actions can only be violated if it is not possible to detain the corpse at the crime scene or at the scene of detection.
Instruments of crime
When examining the murdered, the investigator is guided by article 178 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, as already noted. In this case, not only wounds on the body of the killed person, but also his clothes, as well as the amount of blood around the corpse, should be examined.
Also noted are items that could be a murder weapon - saws, knives, razors, scissors, firearms and others. The nature of the damage corresponds to the type of crime instrument, which should be noted when a protocol for the inspection of the corpse is drawn up.
Protocol entry example
The description may look as follows (a cut or puncture wound): “In front, on the left half of the body, in the III intercostal space, 5 cm from the midline and 141 cm above the level of the sole, there is an elongated wound 2.5 x 2 in size , 1 cm. When the edges are squeezed, the wound line becomes 2.8 cm long. The lower end of the wound is acute-angled, the upper end is U-shaped, the marginal sections of the wound are even. Hypodermis appears in the wound. The skin around is inflamed. From the upper end of the wound up and to the right there is a drip of dried blood 9 cm long and 1.5 cm wide. " The findings of the description are contained in the same document. From the example you can see that the wound was inflicted at the moment when the victim was in an inverted state, the nature of the flow of blood also speaks about this.
When dismembering, it is necessary to find out whether this was the cause of death or whether the offender did it after he killed the victim in another way.
The results of this analysis significantly affect the qualification of the crime. If a murder was committed by dismemberment, this act is qualified as murder with particular cruelty, if the dismemberment was carried out after death, as an abuse of the body of the deceased.
Questions to the expert
At this stage, a forensic expert or doctor is involved in the examination. Together with the investigator, the specialist must give answers to the following questions (as well as make answers to the protocol for the inspection of the corpse):
- Are injuries intravital or are they caused after the death of the victim.
- Are there traces of dragging the corpse to the place where it was found on the ground?
- Whether damage to the corpse is characteristic of the situation in which it was found. For example, for a fatal car accident, a corpse may have obvious injuries sustained in a collision with a vehicle.
- In the investigation of murders where there is a dismemberment of the corpse, it is necessary to find out whether all parts of the body are found and whether they belong to the same body.
- When killing with any weapon, the expert finds out characteristic injuries - post-mortem or intravital, as well as the position of the victim during striking against the attacker.
In the event that the body is already buried, the corpse is exhumed, having previously notified the relatives of the deceased. If they disagree, the removal of the body occurs by court order.
Additional evidence and expertise
The protocol for the inspection of the scene and the corpse also includes a description of the clothes of the victim. This process has the same meaning as examining the body itself. By the nature of the damage to clothes and shoes, the expert not only determines the method of causing injuries, but also uses them as an additional way to determine the circumstances of the incident.
For example, the presence of a front wound on the corpse in the chest area caused by a sharp piercing object, and the absence of tissue fibers in the wound, as well as the absence of a characteristic opening on the clothes, indicates that the corpse was undressed at least in waist length. In addition, the victim was dressed already after death. All these data must be indicated when the protocol for the inspection of the corpse is drawn up.
If there is a fact of dismemberment, when there are no visible injuries on the body that would cause death, a forensic medical examination should reveal during the autopsy and examination of the corpse the presence of toxic substances in the body, as well as internal bleeding that could lead to death.