“The sworn statement statute is cited in the article.”
841-4 in part:
“The testimony of all witnesses examined by any coroner or deputy coroner pertaining to the death of any person wherein a coroner’s investigation is required,”
So if the coroner decides not to take any witness statements, there would be no sworn witness statements.
Are you say the coroner has no discretion about whether they need witness statements? I don’t see that in the statutes.
I suspect that after the autopsy results, the coroner wouldn’t see a need for witness statements.
The autopsy result supposedly DEPENDED ABSOLUTELY on witness statements.
Anonymous witness statements not taken under oath and contradicting what was said publicly by the witnesses.
So to bypass the requirement for sworn statements Dr Harle (who wasn’t there, used no means to communicate the pronouncement of death that the anonymous EMS worker claimed she made, didn’t know what Fuddy was truly wearing in the water, and changed the cause of death without substantiation after failing to do the enzyme tests that would have made her case or request the medical records that would have been legal-quality evidence rather than mere hearsay,) used hearsay from the NTSB even though the NTSB says they did NOT talk to her and the MPD (in a news article) said the NTSB only gave the conditions of the crash.
So witness statements were supposedly CRITICAL to the determination of the cause of death. It’s just SWORN WITNESS STATEMENTS that weren’t so important...
Statements are MANDATED in HRS 841-3. Anyone with knowledge is required to report the facts they know about the circumstances of the death to the coroner with jurisdiction. Those are mandated witness statements - not up to the discretion of the coroner to seek out, but MANDATED for the witnesses to go to the coroner and present, under oath. Unless Fuddy is still alive and the witnesses know it, they could/should all be fined for failing to obey HRS 841-3.