Photo: Allison Dinner/AFP/Getty Images
When there’s no one to Attend to the Dead
How one small change to Texas’s Code of Criminal Procedure created a cascade of problems for the state’s capacity to investigate death
The Nation, 12 October 2023
“The systems that states use to respond to death vary across the United States, but Texas’s is especially unusual. Just 14 of Texas’s 254 counties have a medical examiner. In most of the state, elected officials called justices of the peace, who have no medical training, determine cause of death and sign death certificates. When justices choose to send bodies to other counties’ medical examiners for autopsies, the examiner keeps a substantial portion of the fee. There’s a high demand for limited services, and the profit motive can incentivize taking on more work than offices can handle.“
Completed with the support of a Neal Peirce Foundation Journalism Grant.
How one small change to Texas’s Code of Criminal Procedure created a cascade of problems for the state’s capacity to investigate death
The Nation, 12 October 2023
“The systems that states use to respond to death vary across the United States, but Texas’s is especially unusual. Just 14 of Texas’s 254 counties have a medical examiner. In most of the state, elected officials called justices of the peace, who have no medical training, determine cause of death and sign death certificates. When justices choose to send bodies to other counties’ medical examiners for autopsies, the examiner keeps a substantial portion of the fee. There’s a high demand for limited services, and the profit motive can incentivize taking on more work than offices can handle.“
Completed with the support of a Neal Peirce Foundation Journalism Grant.
Caroline Eaton Tracey writes about the environment, migration, and the arts in the US Southwest, Mexico, and their borderlands. She speaks and works in English, Spanish, and Russian. Her first book, SALT LAKES, will be published by W.W. Norton.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline’s reporting appears in the New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, High Country News, and elsewhere, as well as in Spanish in Mexico’s Nexos.
In 2022 she was awarded the Waterston Prize for Desert Writing and in 2023 she received Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Fellowship in Journalism and Human and Civil Rights and a Silvers Foundation Work-in-Progress grant.
Caroline holds a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives with her wife, Mexican architect and sculptor Mariana GJP, between Tucson, Arizona and Mexico City.
She is represented by Bridget Matzie of Aevitas Creative Management.
Caroline Eaton Tracey escribe sobre el medioambiente, la migración, el arte y la literatura en México, el Suroeste de Estados Unidos y su frontera. Habla ingles, español y ruso. Su primer libro, SALT LAKES, será publicado bajo el sello de la editorial W.W. Norton.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.
Sus artículos aparecen en The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books y High Country News entre otros lugares. En español escribe frecuentemente para la revista Nexos.
En 2022 ganó el Premio Waterston por Escritura del Desierto y en 2023 recibió la beca Ira A. Lipman de periodismo de derechos humanos y civiles de Columbia University y una beca de la Fundación Silvers.
Caroline es Doctora en Geografía de la Universidad de California–Berkeley. Vive con su esposa, la arquitecta y escultora mexicana Mariana GJP, entre Tucson, Arizona y la Ciudad de México.
La representa Bridget Matzie de la agencia literaria Aevitas Creative Management.