Coroner

Louis G. Finch, IV

Driver Safety Courses

Driver safety courses for High School Driver’s Education classes are available upon request from the Coroner’s Office.  The course emphasizes what happens in the event of a tragic accident, from the involvement of Police Officers on the scene, the role of the Coroner in handling the victims who did not survive, to the part the State Attorney plays if charges are filed against a driver, and finally to the family who suffers everlasting repercussions

State Of Illinois Requirements:

The State of Illinois requires the following reasons to investigate a death:

  1. Sudden or violent death (whether apparently suicidal, homicidal, or accidental), including but not limited to deaths apparently caused or contributed to by thermal, traumatic, chemical, electrical, or radiational injury, or a complication of any of them, by drowning or suffocation, anesthetic deaths or therapeutic misadventures.

  2. Maternal or fetal death due to criminal abortion, or any death due to a sex crime against nature.

  3. Death where the circumstances are suspicious, obscure or mysterious, or where (in the written opinion of the attending physician) the cause of death is not determined.

  4. Death where addiction to alcohol or to any drug may have been a contributory cause.

  5. Death without medical attendance by a licensed physician.  (The Illinois Coroners/Medical Examiners Association and the Advisory Board On Necropsy Service to Coroners have recommended that medical attendance must have been rendered within 72 hours prior to death.)

  6. In the case of death without medical attendance involving a member of a church which relies upon prayer or spiritual means alone for healing, the coroner should not rely upon such membership alone as sufficient evidence for signing the death certificate, nor should he use that fact alone for ordering an autopsy.  When it is made known to him that such a person has died, he should go at once to the  place where the body is and thereupon determine the facts a she would for any other investigation prior to the releasing of the body to the funeral director.

  7. Hospice cases.

  8. Firemen working fires, that die within 30 days of that fire (because of all chemically treated fabrics, etc.)

Fees:

The State of Illinois has set the following fees for the Coroner’s Office:

  1. For a copy of a transcript of sworn testimony:  $3.00 per page.
  2. for a copy of an autopsy report (if not included in transcript):  $30.00
  3. For a copy of the verdict of a coroner’s jury:  $5.00
  4. For a copy of a toxicology report:   $15.00
  5. For a print of a picture obtained by the coroner:  actual cost or $3.00, whichever is greater.
  6. For each copy of miscellaneous reports, including artist’s drawings but not including police reports:  actual cost or $15.00, whichever is greater.
  7. For a coroner’s or medical examiner’s permit to cremate a dead body:  $50.00.