Medical Homicide

Accordingly, there are five ways that forensic pathologists would categorize deaths.  They may be natural, accidental, homicide, suicide or undetermined.  In essence, homicide is when somebody has caused the death of another person. 

Now, the LA County Coroner categorized the death of Jackson as medical homicide precisely after he was given a medication for non-medical reason and caused (his) death.  There was simply no medical reason for propofol to have been administered intravenously to Jackson.  Things would have been different when, for instance, Jackson was in surgery and the doctor had given him too much medication.  In the latter case, his death must have been declared an accident.

The simplest way to describe a medical homicide is it is a medical decision that cannot be justified medically or that makes absolutely no medical sense at all.

Thus, while there is definitely no way for anyone to impute to Jackson’s doctor an intention to kill, it cannot be denied that what he did was so beyond what normal people would consider reasonable medicine.  At the surface level, he used an anesthetic without an anesthesiologist.  That shows the doctor had no or cannot simply provide medical justification, but also did not have the right support system in place.  Jackson died in his rented mansion, and propofol was administered outside the hospital.

Actually, medical homicide cases very rarely happen.  Usually, these cases are of euthanasia in nature.  To a certain point, then, when one commits a medical homicide, then it would have been really gross – meaning, there’s really no justification for what was done.