Are you certain there was no petechial hemoraging in the whites of the eyes? That is not what I gathered from the description of the petechial hemmoraging. In another area of the autopsy, the coroner does describe the eyes as being white, but this is the area where she is describing the general health of the child. The brain is also described as being unremarkable, and we know there was trauma there. I read that and took it to mean that JonBenet's general health was good before the attack. If she had described the whites of the eyes as being yellow, that would have indicated liver problems and poor health at the time of death.
You may be right. I can only go on how I'm reading it. The relevant quote is "the sclerae are white" (whites of the eyes). I would find it remarkable that if there were petechial hemorrhaging of the whites of the eyes, given it's investigative significance, that he would not have mentioned that. So, I think it very unlikely there was any. Maybe, for some reason, he just neglected to mention it.
I'm interested in where you gathered that there was petechial hemorrhaging in the whites of the eyes b/c I could find no reference to that at all. I could have missed something, but I didn't see it.
BTW, it would be nice if we could get an MD or pathologist on to discuss this as well as the head trauma. In particular, I would like to know how specific to strangulation petechial hemorrhaging in the whites of the eyes really is. I say that b/c petechial hemorrhaging on the skin is also a symptom of head trauma, so the two things are hard to distinguish and it CAN also be a symptom of strangulation. I've only read that petechial hemorrhaging in the whites of the eyes is the only definitive way to say that a person actually DIED of strangulation. But we may be in a gray area b/c the events are so close together that its hard to tell. I just don't know.
Now, I would also point out that even if she had expired BEFORE strangulation, that does NOT by itself implicate the family. The attacker may have simply engaged in 'overkill'.