First and foremost the forensic pathologist seeks the truth. T he pathologist should be trained and experienced in the area of pathology at issue and currently in active practice. It makes no sense for example to expect a university professor who sits as administrator and chairman of a large and busy department to address the issue of missed cancer on a prostate needle biopsy. N o individual could master the entire specialty yet the vast majority of cases can be handled by one pathologist. The best superspecialist expert witness is one who is actively practicing within a hospital.
Most pathologists have at least a few publications and superspecialists usually have many.
T he ideal pathologist as expert witness is board certified in anatomic and clinical pathology. The expert should be actively practicing in a hospital, serves on hospital committees, is a member of the county medical society, serves on committees at the county medical society level, is active in teaching physicians, nurses and laboratory staff, is a fellow of the College of American Pathologists and the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, is a member of the state pathology society, directs a clinical pathology laboratory that is certified by the College of American Pathologists, has no recent or frequent job changes and is known and respected in the community. Credible witnesses should be able to accurately and clearly summarize complex medical issues. Case examples that require combined anatomic and clinical pathology skills are surgery accidents and deaths, anesthesia accidents and deaths and blood transfusion catastrophes. Purely forensic pathology issues involve unnatural death, i.e. accident, homicide, suicide or unknown, toxicology problems, accident reconstruction, crime reconstruction, time of death, funeral director error, exhumation, paternity dispute, food poisoning and an extremely varied array of other situations and events that end up in litigation.