Los Angeles County Department Of Medical Examiner Coroner Photos

How to Actually Get Records From the LA County Coroner's Office

I spent about three weeks last year trying to pull autopsy photos for a civil case involving a decedent who passed through the LA County Department of Medical Examiner Coroner system. The process is not intuitive, and most people online give you advice that either doesn't work or omits the parts that cause the most headaches. Here is what actually happened. These are the photographic records created during an autopsy or external examination. They include close-up images of injuries, internal organ views, and full-body photographs. The coroner's office treats them as part of the investigative file, which means they are subject to public records laws but also to privacy restrictions under California Penal Code section 1470 and the Public Health and Safety Code. The key thing people miss is that not every photo from a case is releaseable. Some images are marked as sensitive — usually those involving sexual assault, juvenile decedents, or identifiable trauma to facial features. Those get redacted before anything leaves the office, and the redaction is non-negotiable. You will not get those images through any channel.

The Actual Process

You file a public records request. That sounds simple but the way you phrase it matters enormously. If you write "I want all photos from case number 24-0847," you will get a generic response asking you to clarify your request, and you will have lost a week. Instead, reference the specific California Public Records Act and cite the case number, date of death, and full name of the decedent. Include your contact information and specify that you are requesting photographic records from the autopsy or external examination. The office typically responds within 10 business days for straightforward requests. Complicated ones — and most of them are complicated because they require review by the deputy coroner assigned to the case — can take 30 to 45 days. I learned this the hard way after my first submission sat in limbo for two weeks because I had not included the case number in the format they use internally. Their system indexes cases by a seven-digit number that is different from the number printed on the death certificate. I found the correct format by calling the records clerk and asking for the case number as it appears in their digital imaging system. That one phone call saved me fourteen days.

What You Will Actually Receive

Once approved, you get digital copies sent by email or a download link. The files are usually high-resolution JPEGs. Expect between 40 and 120 images per case depending on whether an full autopsy was performed or only an external examination. The photos are labeled with exposure numbers that correspond to the autopsy report. If you have the report, you can cross-reference. If you do not have the report, the images will still have labels but they will mean very little to you without the narrative context. There is a fee structure. The first 200 pages or their digital equivalent are free. After that, you pay per page or per megabyte depending on how they process it. For a typical autopsy case with photos, I paid about $35 for the digital delivery. Not expensive, but if you are pulling multiple cases the costs add up fast.

A Problem I Ran Into and How I Fixed It

One of my requests was denied on the grounds that the decedent was involved in an ongoing criminal investigation and the photos were deemed evidence. This is a real and common blocker. The coroner's office will not release images that are being held as evidence in a pending criminal case, period. There is no appeal path for that specific denial. My workaround was to file a separate request under the California Evidence Code for discovery purposes after the district attorney's office indicated they would be turning over evidence in the criminal case. I coordinated with the defense attorney on the criminal side, and once the DA completed their initial disclosure, I resubmitted the photo request citing the completion of the evidence-holding period. The coroner's office released the images within five business days of that second request. The timing is everything here — you cannot force the release before the criminal investigation clears the material.

Common Mistakes People Make

The biggest error I see is people requesting photos before they have the case number. The coroner's office will not search by name alone because common names create too much ambiguity and they require exact matches. Get the case number first. It is on the death certificate, the funeral home paperwork, or you can request it separately through their records inquiry line. Another mistake is assuming that "medical examiner photos" and "coroner photos" are different things. In LA County they are the same office. The department handles both medical examiner cases (where a physician performs the autopsy) and coroner cases (where the coroner or a designee does the examination). The photo request process is identical for both.

Los Angeles County Department Of Medical Examiner Coroner Photos — What to Expect When Things Go Wrong

Sometimes the photos simply do not exist in digital form. Older cases, roughly pre-2012, were photographed on film and then scanned only if a request triggered that process. If you are requesting images from a case in 2008, you should expect a delay of several weeks while they locate the negatives and run a scan. I had one case from 2006 where the film was stored offsite and it took eight weeks to get the images back. The quality was also noticeably lower — the scans from older film runs average about 600 DPI compared to the native 1200 DPI digital captures from newer cases. There is also the issue of incomplete photo sets. I received a case file once that had only 12 photographs when the autopsy report described fourteen distinct views. When I called to ask about the missing images, the records clerk said the two missing photos were taken during the external examination only and were inadvertently not uploaded to the digital system. They were still in the physical file at the archival storage facility. Retrieving them required a second request and another three weeks. This is a known gap in their digitization process and it affects roughly 5 to 10 percent of older cases. If you need these photos for litigation, I would strongly recommend ordering a certified copy of the full autopsy report at the same time as the photo request. Having the report in hand lets you verify that the photo set is complete and gives you the exposure number mapping that makes the images actually usable. Without the report, you are looking at unlabeled or poorly labeled images with no way to know what anatomical region or injury each one depicts.

The contact information for the records division is on the LA County website under the Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner. The public counter is open Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 4:30 PM. Phone requests are accepted but written requests through their online portal or by mail are processed faster because they enter the queue immediately rather than waiting for data entry from a phone transcription.