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Coroners Complicit in Obscuring Violent Deaths in State Custody / Terence Keel

Cells at a prison or jail in the united states

Many of us don't realize that access to death records is not something protected by our constitution. It depends on what state you live in. If you look across the 50 states of the US, there are states that don't allow people to get access to death records unless you are the next of kin. Even if you get those records, it's not always the case that those records are going to reveal the truth of what happened. I think perhaps more nefarious and difficult is we in this nation hold terrible ideas about people on the wrong side of the law. We often don't want to admit it, but we often believe that when people get arrested or go to jail and they lose their lives or they become sick or ill, we feel they deserved it somehow.

Terence Keel returns to discuss his new book from Beacon Press, The Coroner's Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence. "The Moment of Truth" with Jeff Dorchen follows the interview.

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Guest

Terence Keel

Terence Keel is a Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles where he teaches in the Department of African American Studies and the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics. He also directs the UCLA Lab for BioCritical Studies and also serves as the Advisor for Structural Competency and Innovation for the UCLA Simulation Center at the David Geffen School of Medicine.

 

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