County coroners have variety of duties for little pay

Coroners have jobs that commonly evoke images of gleaming labs, high-tech equipment and complex, cutting-edge procedures to solve crimes within an hour.

Such images — generated and fueled by television shows like "CSI," "Cold Case" and tru TV programs — couldn't be farther from the truth in Southeast Missouri where counties haven't established a medical examiner.

While more populated counties and major cities have a medical examiner's office and a forensic pathologist who is a licensed medical doctor, most of the rural and mid-sized counties in Missouri still use the coroner's office.

It's an important job, and one crucial to maintaining the integrity of death investigations for a county.

The coroner is second in line to the county sheriff in terms of authority and assumes that position, at least temporarily, should the sheriff need to step down or be unable to perform duties. It's a job that requires a person to be on call at all times.

"I think it's still a three-quarter-time job, between 25 and 30 hours a week," said Cape Girardeau County Coroner John Clifton. "There's so much more to the job than just going out to the scene of a death."

The workload has increased in the past two years, Clifton said.

Clifton has two coroner's deputies on whom he can rely to handle some of the calls, he said.

In most cases in Southeast Missouri and around the state, the post doesn't pay well.

"It's hard for me to imagine how they continue to find competent people to do this job," Clifton said.

Cape Girardeau is one of the few first-class counties left in Missouri that has a coroner instead of a medical examiner. Clifton's salary is the highest in Southeast Missouri, $35,000 a year in 2008, and he is also one of the busiest, because of two major hospitals in the county.

Establishing a medical examiner's office would require the county to spend more than $100,000 for the salaries of medical staff and the necessary equipment and lab to perform autopsies.

Cape Girardeau and all of the counties in Southeast Missouri must send bodies to the state lab in Farmington when a death investigation is required.

The cost of an autopsy is about $2,500 for the county, said Larry Cotrell, Butler County coroner.

The coroner's office is responsible for procuring evidence for the state during a criminal death investigation. Death investigations are generally performed in any case of an unnatural or suspicious death, any death involving fire or drowning and any child death.

"I'm so blessed to have such good law enforcement teams," Clifton said.

While Cape Girardeau has its own evidence collection teams, Clifton said, coroners in smaller counties are forced to conduct their own investigations, and collect and process their own evidence, in addition to testifying at any subsequent hearings or trials.

Many coroners in Southeast Missouri also own funeral parlors, a practice that dates back to the origins of the job, when the coroner also was the main furniture maker in town, because those were the ones most likely to have access to coffins, Clifton said.

The Scott County Coroner earns a salary of about $17,500. In Perry County, the coroner makes $14,497, and in Bollinger County, it's less than $10,000 a year.

Clifton said eventually he thinks Cape Girardeau County will employ a medical examiner.

bdicosmo@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 245

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