Journal of forensic sciences
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Review Case Reports
Cardiac sarcoidosis--an occult cause of sudden death: a case report and literature review.
Sarcoidosis is a multi-systemic granulomatous disease of unknown cause. It commonly involves lymph nodes, lungs, eyes, and skin. Cardiac sarcoid may be isolated, or associated with systemic involvement. ⋯ The most common site of involvement is the interventricular septum base, which when involved may lead to heart block or arrhythmia. We report a case of sudden death in a 33-year-old male with a history of surgically repaired congenital heart disease. Although his congenital heart disease was originally postulated to be important in his death, autopsy examination revealed cardiac sarcoid with prominent involvement of the conduction system.
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Atypical gunshot wounds due to ricochet and intermediate targets have been well described in the literature. We represent a case of suicide with an atypical entrance wound and bullet without rifling marks due to 9 mm ammunition being loaded and fired from a 40 caliber semiautomatic pistol.
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This paper describes an epidemic of uncommon psychiatric symptoms among nine criminal defendants charged under California's new "Three Strikes and You're Out" law. The defendants were facing a minimum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. The defendants exhibited the following uncommon psychiatric symptoms: coprophagia (eating feces), eating cockroaches and many reported seeing little green men. ⋯ The authors created a database which included information on the defendants from court documents and from our interview with the defendants. We summarized the data and outcomes of the case. Also included is a brief review of the "Three Strikes Law" and a paradigm for how we ruled out relevant psychiatric diagnoses before we arrived at our opinion of malingering.