Chap. 194.—An ACT to amend and re-enact Section 4806 of the Code of Virginia,
as amended, relating to the functions and duties of coroners. [S B 212]

Approved March 11, 1942

I. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia, That section
forty-eight hundred and six of the Code of Virginia, as amended, be
amended and re-enacted, as follows: |

Section 4806. Coroner to be Notified of any Sudden, Violent, Un-
natural or Suspicious Death, or Death Without Medical Attendance.—It
shall be the duty of the physician, undertaker, or other person in attend-
ance, to notify the coroner hereinafter required to view the body of any
sudden, violent, unnatural or suspicious death, or a death without medi-
eal attendance, and upon notice of such a death, the coroner of the city
of Richmond, if the dead body be in the penitentiary, and in any other
case the coroner of the county or the corporation in which the dead body
is, unless the death resulted apparently from an injury which occurred
or illness which commenced in some other county or corporation in which
case the coroner of such other county or corporation, shall view the body
and make inquiry into the circumstances of the said death, and after an
inquiry had, as aforesaid, if facts are revealed sufficient to create in the
mind of the said coroner a reasonable belief that the person whose body
he shall have been called to view came to his or her death by murder or
manslaughter, or by the contrivance, aiding, procuring, or other miscon-
duct of any person or persons, he shall fix a time and place for a hearing
to determine when, how, and by what means the said person came to his
death; provided, however, no such hearing or inquest shall be held and
no autopsy shall be performed unless and until the same be requested by
either the Commonwealth’s attorney, or the judge of the circuit or cor-
poration court, of the county or corporation wherein such dead body 1s,
or of the county or corporation wherein the injury occurred or the illness
commenced if the dead body is in another county or corporation.