The office of state medical examiners shall have the authority to make postmortem examinations, to undertake inquests, and to perform autopsies where there may be in its judgment a reasonable belief that the manner of death could be pronounced as: (1) Death by a homicide, suicide, or casualty; (2) Death due to a criminal abortion; (3) Death due to an accident involving lack of due care on the part of a person other than the deceased; (4) Death which is the immediate or remote consequences of any physical or toxic injury incurred while the deceased person was employed; (5) Death due to the use of addictive or unidentifiable chemical agents; or (6) Death due to an infectious agent capable of spreading an epidemic within the state. History of Section.P.L. 1973, ch. 169, § 1.
Rhode Island Legal Code