1.2.1 - Cause, Manner, and Mechanism of Death

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]some really important vocabulary terms manner cause and mechanism of death you're going to need to know the difference between these and you're going to need to be able to identify them and how they relate to each other and explain it so this is a really important video make sure you're paying attention all right so there are five legally defined manners of death so these are legal designations for manners of death you can only have one of five all right uh and this is this is entirely like a a legal designation it's it's it's going to be one of these five things no matter what right so those are number one natural which means this is due entirely or nearly entirely to Natural disease processes um you know cancer is a natural manner is a natural cause of death so uh for each of these manners I'm going to kind of explain like what are some example causes of death as well uh accidental so an accidental death is due to some sort of injury it's not because of some sort of disease it's not because somebody these um you know Parkinson's or Alzheimer's progressed it's not because they had a heart attack uh it's because of some sort of uh injury so somebody's in a car accident and they um have a severe laceration and they bleed out right that would be an accident um or somebody's you know uh neck is broken in some sort of accident while while mountain climbing they fall to their death or something like that right these are accidental deaths uh next one is a homicide side uh and now with with these next two both this one and the next one intent is really important so for homicide there has to be an intentional act so when somebody kills somebody else and it was intentional that is a homicide if it is a suicide once again the intent is really important this has to be something that was intentionally done right um so for example you could have the same cause of death um a uh like a a gunshot wound right a gunshot wound could be somebody's cause of death now that could be a homicide if somebody else intentionally shot them and killed them it could be a suicide if they intentionally shot themselves and killed themselves or it could be an accident if they were like cleaning their gun and they didn't check to make sure that it was unloaded and they accidentally shot themselves right uh so the intent is really important there and then finally we have undetermined now undetermined is not like a real man of death but it is a real legal designation so it's one of our five legal manners of death and this just means that like there's not enough information there's not enough evidence to really say definitively which of the other four manners of death uh this particular death fell under right and so these are all going to be legal designations uh that are generally going to be um uh recommended by the medical examiner in a forensic autopsy so in a forensic autopsy where our goal is to figure out what what is the cause and manner of death uh that medical examiner is going to um basically put together all the evidence they've got available to them from the autopsy from the rest of the case and determine which of those five legal designations this person's death would fall under right now the cause of death is different so I've already been talking about some example causes of death but the cause of death is a specific event specific injury uh specific happening right and it's going to fall under a particular manner of death generally so you can kind of think of like the manners of death as being like these large umbrellas and Under The Umbrellas are lots of different possible causes of death that are more specific right um so some examples of some the most common causes of death in the United States actually have uh an article here from the CDC uh these are numbers from uh 2022 uh number one cause of death in the United States is heart disease right so this would be an example of a natural death right so heart disease would fall under the natural manner of death umbrella same thing for cancer now they've lumped together all accidents together as one thing right they didn't like split up like specific accidents like car accidents versus you know biking accidents versus fell in my home and broke my hip and nobody saved me accidents right but these are unintentional injuries right that's number three so all the causes of death that fall under that accidental manner um covid-19 specifically um this is from 2022 um was fourth stroke or cerebrovascular diseases um was fifth chronic lower respiratory diseases right so we're seeing a lot of natural causes of death right Alzheimer's diabetes nefritis nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis chronic liver diseases so almost all of the top 10 right causes of death uh in the United States in 2022 were natural causes of death um accidents is really only in the 10 because it was all lumped together okay all right sorry about that all right let's get back into full screen here if we can can we uh maybe we can't oh well it's fine all right um mechanism of death then this one is pretty tricky this is a trickier one with mechanism of death and this is where we're going to have like a kind of specific description of the physiological processes happening to somebody's body which resulted in death so this is where you're going to see like a lot more technical terms um so extreme blood loss um which has a fancy term called exanguination you might see that occasionally uh that would be a mechanism of death right that could be due to like an accident right so somebody could be in a car accident the car accident could be the cause of death it would be in accidental Manner and they could have died from exanguination or extreme blood loss due to like an injury right so the cause of death you could even say car accident or you could say like a laceration of an artery or something like that you could get a little bit more specific um but then that mechanism is the fact that they're you know they're losing blood they've lost all this blood then they have oxygen deprivation of the brain because they're not getting enough blood to their brain and then they died right uh so you'll see that sort of thing oxygen deprivation ventricular FIB fibrillation that's when the heart goes into an arhythmia um right and can eventually result in cardiac arrest so Cardiac Arrest would be another one these sort of more technical medical terminology explaining what's actually happening inside the body that resulted in somebody dying that's mechanism of death that's how they actually wound up dead so matching causes to manners we'll just kind of go through this and play along while you're watching and see if you can guess um the correct manner when we have a Cause right so cancer natural shooting somebody else most likely a homicide so long as there is intent right let that intent is really important head trauma from a fall that would be an accident and then this importantly important an intentional overdose intentional overdose would be suicide as opposed to an unintentional overdose right an unintentional overdose would be that would be an accident as well so if somebody unintentionally overdoses on a drug and they die from it that would be an accident but if they meant to then it's a suicide right when it comes to homicide and suicide as's a reminder intent is really important