FROM THE EDITOR
[email protected] TIME TO CREATE AN ME’S OFFICE
Establishing the office of a medical examiner and crime lab should be a priority for the Williamson County Commissioners Court.
Both commissioners and justices of the peace — the latter charged with death investigations — seem to agree on this point.
Not only would such a move streamline probes into death cases currently undertaken by overworked justices of the peace, who are not forensic pathologists — a trained doctor known as a medical examiner — but supporters say it could help reduce costs to the taxpayer.
In addition to handling civil cases, marriages, Class C misdemeanors and other legal matters, JPs serve as coroners in counties lacking a medical examiner.
Williamson County also has a handful of death-inquest investigators to aid the justices of the peace.
Local JPs are charged with responding to unusual or suspicious deaths, accidents, suicides – almost any demise that happens without a doctor present. They investigate, work with police, rule on causes of death, communicate with families, sign death certificates and sometimes request autopsies. The autopsy cases have to be sent out of county at a cost, and as the population grows, more expenditures are anticipated.
In 2024, Williamson County averaged about 24 deaths a week. That number is increasing. So far in 2025, the average is about 28 deaths per week.
Williamson County justices of the peace handled 756 death cases in 2020. During the first six months of 2025, that figure climbed to 800 cases.
In 2024, the four JP courts spent from $382,000 to $591,000 on out-of-county autopsies.
Post-mortem costs run $3,100 to $4,200 at the Travis County Medical Examiners Office in Austin or an independent forensic pathology and crime lab.
According to demographers, Williamson County is one of the fastest growing in the country. The advent of Samsung Austin Semiconductor and other high-tech industries is going to see the population boom even more.
If the trend continues, by 2030 there will be 40 deaths a week, officials predict.
The justices are already busy enough with full caseloads in their courts. Yet they also remain on call — on a rotating basis — to handle deaths. That is not efficient.
With almost 728,000 residents, Wilco is the 12th-largest county in Texas by population, but it is the only one of the 13 largest without a medical examiner.
Hiring the death-inquest investigators is a good way to bridge the gap until a medical examiner’s office is created, but it hasn’t helped as much as some thought it would. The time demands related to death inquests placed on justices of the peace have not lessened.
Death is inevitable. Creating a medical examiner’s office should be, too.
— Thomas Edwards
Agree? Disagree? Send your thoughts to thomas. [email protected]. We may run your comments as a letter to the editor, which we reserve the right to edit for length, taste and grammar.
Comment
Comments