Reported by Bill Kelly, STATEWIDE Correspondent
 
Marvin Bonham had been dead 30 years when a judge said his body should be removed from his grave in Logan, Iowa. There were enough questions about how Marvin died to warrant a second look by a medical examiner.
When a coroner signed the death certificate in 1963, the case seemed pretty simple. Marvin's wife said he'd shot himself with a 357 magnum at their home in rural Washington County. That's what Ron Murray, his cousin was told.
[Murray]"They are being told it's a suicide. They know their business. We don't know anything about it. End of story."
[Kelly]"Did the family believe it?"
[Murray] "No.. no."
[Kelly]"Its been a long thirty years then."
[Murray] "Long thirty years. Yeah it sure has." The decision to exhume Marvin Bohnam's body came this year after the funeral director who had prepared the body told a state patrol investigator about photos he'd taken that seemed to show Marvin was hit by more than one bullet.
[Kelly]"This would clear Marvin's name?"
[Murray] "Yes. Yes."
[Kelly]"It would be a not guilty verdict for him."
[Murray] "That's right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right"
Remarkably a hauntingly similar story unfolded years later just up the road in Herman Nebraska. In 1993 near a city park police found a young man shot to death. It was 24 year old Jay Jensen. Another Washington County coroner ruled the official cause of death to be suicide.
Ron and Gloria Jensen have been haunted by the official ruling that their son was so troubled that he would take his own life.
 [Gloria Jensen]"That's kind of hard to live with to think that he was sad and would take his own life. We couldn't believe it. We didn't believe it, but we were told that. So for six years we just kind of .....its hard to know what you feel. You just keep busy and go on living , that's all."
Even the first newspaper article quotes the sheriff stating that Jay had been shot twice. An autopsy was done in Omaha and the coroner still ruled it a suicide.
[Ron Jensen] "But then when we got the new evidence and the new sheriff went to work on it, been a lot of work done on it, a lot of investigation, so now we have new hopes."
At the park in Herman that night there was a witness who reportedly claims he saw a man shoot Jay Jensen. Evidence enough to re-open the three year old case.
Whenever there is a suspicious death... on when a physician is not on hand at the time of death, the county coroner is called in to investigate. In Nebraska, that job is automatically given to the county attorney. It has been that way since 1915. Most states now require fully trained medical examiners to handle death investigations. Only eleven still use coroners exclusively... and only one state, Nebraska, requires the county attorney to take on the job of determining cause of death. And there is another thing that makes Nebraska distinctive:
[Kelly]"By law is there any special training required for a county coroner?"
[Gilg] "No."
[Kelly]" People would be surprised to hear that."
[Gilg] "They should be surprised to hear that. But that was very surprising to me when I was elected county attorney 12 years ago. I've been trained that when you go out on a coroner call then you should assume there is foul play and rule it out. That you do step by step in your investigation it rule out foul play and then you arrive at your conclusion. Many times that's not what happens because of a lack of training."
But rarely are such concerns raised publicly in Nebraska about the duel role of the coroner and county attorney. However, the state's county attorneys are far from unified on whether the system needs to be changed.
[Kelly]"We wanted to find out how the county attorneys themselves felt about their role as coroner, so STATEWIDE, in cooperation with the NE Association of County Attorneys sent a survey out to every county attorney in the state. What we found is that while county attorneys are almost evenly split on whether they should maintain their role as coroner, there is overwhelming support to look for alternatives to the current system."
71 percent... either agreed or strongly agreed that alternatives to the current system should be investigate. Nearly three out of four county attorneys feel it's a weakness in the system that they are not trained in forensic science. More than half feared their lack of expertise could result in mistakes being made in a major investigation."
It's been almost twenty years since there's been any serious discussion about overhauling the coroner system in the state. And there is no legislation anticipated in this legislative session. But it would require a change in state law, and possibly an infusion of state funds if there is to be any change possible at all. About half of the state's county attorneys surveyed claim some additional training in death investigation. But apparently only one, Deb Gilg, has national certification as a forensic examiner. It is not always homicides where forensic training is valuble. In 1997 the emergency room staff at Ogallala Community Hospital were shocked at the condition of a baby girl named Brittany brought in by her father... Edward Arneson. She was bruised and had a shockingly severe diaper rash. The child died."
[Gilg]"..That something bad happened to this child other than the fact that this child is dead..something bad happened to this child before she died..and we've got a duty to investigate as fully as possible and find out."
The fact that the child had been taken to a hospital and examined by medical professionals was crucial in this case for collecting forensic evidence.
[Gilg]"If this child had been found at home in this condition, absolutely it would have been important to have a medical examiner because a medical examiner would have known the types of environmental things from their medical background and training that the investigators should be looking for."
The case never went to trial. Edward Arenson plead guilty to child neglect. Even with her training, Gilg believes verifying how someone died should be done with the help of those trained in the science of forensics.
[Gilg] There are other cases where you gotta make a judgement call, and the potential for making the wrong judgement call is high.
[Kelly]"What's at stake in making the wrong judgement call in a case like this?"
[Gilg] "Well, you can overlook a criminal act."
As in Brittany's case, when an autopsy is needed in Keith County, the body must be sent three hundred miles away to Scottsbluff. Regional West Medical Center has the only autopsy facility in the western Nebraska.
This is an operating room... in a sense. Its a different type of operating room. In his stainless steel examination room, Forensic pathologist and physician Dr. Ronald Blevins conducts up to one hundred autopsies a year for county coroners in Nebraska.
[Ronald Blevins]"Homicides and suicides certainly make up a significant percentage of the work we do"
Dr. Blevins says the system in Nebraska works because of the good will and professionalism of everyone involved in the law enforcement community. He also thinks the system is overdue for an overhaul.
[Ronald Blevins] "I think most of them take it seriously. I think where the problem occurs is in a county so rural and small that they may have one significant investigation every five years, ten years, even fifteen years so that it is not something in those counties they would necessarily be well skilled in dealing with."
[Dr. Henry Lee]{facilitating a training session} "The Twentieth Century criminal investigation is a scientific investigation..."
The chief medical examiner for the State of Connecticut... saw the need for professional death investigation in the case of OJ Simpson. Lee's science based testimony for Simpson's defense dream team showed how the crime scene can be mis-handled. Speaking to Nebraska investigators this year, Lee came with a message
[Dr. Henry Lee]" In next five years this criminal investigation is going to be a new quantum leap. That's why it's so important to have training so all the law enforcement community, including, the prosecutor, defense attorney, police detective and public... we all should learn together."
Dr. Lee adds that its also important to have a civilian authority to investigate deaths that is independent of the police and prosecutors.
[Dr. Henry Lee]Our job is to serve the society, the community. To protect the innocent people, who get charged, at the same time trying to find the people responsible for the crime."
[Herbert MacDonell]{demonstrating circumstances to a small group}"...and blood started going down through, dripping below where there were horses....."
One of Dr. Lee's colleagues, blood splatter expert Dr. Herbert MacDonell, sees difficulties in having the layman involved in prosecuting crimes also determining how someone died.
[Herbert MacDonell]"You don't want a conflict of interest. And if you have a person who is a scientist, a medical scientist who's interest is only in determining why is this person on the table here, what is the cause of their death, what was the manner of their death, and they don't care about the legal possibilities, wills fortunes, estates and things like that. They are only interested in finding out why the person is there."
So what are the alternatives? There could be a requirement to have county attorneys always have a physician on hand to investigate a suspicious death. Many do that now voluntarily. Some think Nebraska should join 40 other states and find a way to include trained medical examiners in death investigations.
[Gilg]"It really necessitates somebody who has medical training in my opinion. Nebraska would be better served with a medical examiner system. The problem comes down to dollars."
Dr. Blevins advocates a system that maintains county coroners as long as they get some additional technical help.
[Dr. Blevins] "I think there are state's which have maintained the coroner system and added a medical examiner. That is there is someone for the coroner, that he or she knows they can call to help them with their problem, someone designated by the state that's a modification of the system that works pretty well."
Medical examiners with extensive training in forensic investigation would be far too expensive for every county to employ. And a regional system would mean giving the State of Nebraska more involvement in local criminal investigations.
Our survey shows two thirds of the county attorneys believe maintaining local control is a strength in the current system. Others in law enforcement are also skeptical of turning over more power to state investigators.
No one can say if better training... an independent voice... a third set of eyes would have made a difference in either Washington County case. There was never any official accusation about the performance of either county coroner.
But there are two families in Washington County who wonder if a more professional and independent investigation would have saved them years of pain.
[Murray] "But if there's an answer and somebody got by with murder I think its long enough that they shouldn't do it again, and if their system needs change to stop it, change it! I'm not saying what way to change it, but if it's not working work change it; do something different, see if that works..if that doesn't work change it again..ya know?"
[Kelly]"If they don't change it can it happen again?"
[Murray] "Sure it can. I think it happened again two years ago."
In the case of Jay Jensen, a grand jury convened this summer under a new county attorney. A man allegedly seen in the park with Jay was charged with murder. It makes Ron and Gloria Jensen wonder how investigators could ever have claimed their son committed suicide.
[Gloria] "I never liked the looks of suicide on it, so got that changed. If Jay had taken his life that his life didn't mean anything, the life we gave him, that hurt. It's like I failed. And that has hurt me all these years."
[Kelly]"And that's what that death certificate said to you?"
[Gloria] "It said suicide. It doesn't any more."
[Kelly]"Does that heal a little of that hurt? Having it changed?"
[Gloria]"Yeah."
Where death certificates are stored in Lincoln, the Division of Vital Statistics was instructed to change the cause of death for Jay Jensen. The county coroners original ruling has been crossed out, and replaced with homicide.

Captioning by Nebraska Captioning Center, Lincoln, Nebraska