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Section 557. Chief medical examiner.
   (a)   There shall be in the department an independent office of chief medical examiner, the head of which shall be the chief medical examiner, who shall be appointed by the mayor from the classified civil service and be a doctor of medicine and a skilled pathologist and microscopist. The mayor may remove the chief medical examiner upon filing in the office of the commissioner of citywide administrative services and serving upon the chief medical examiner his or her reasons therefor and allowing such officer an opportunity of making a public explanation.
   (b)   The commissioner with respect to the office of chief medical examiner shall exercise the powers and duties set forth in paragraph one of subdivision a of section five hundred fifty-five of this chapter, but shall not interfere with the performance by the chief medical examiner or his or her office of the powers and duties prescribed by the provisions of this section or any other law.
   (c)   The chief medical examiner may appoint and remove such deputy chief medical examiners, medical examiners, medical investigators, lay medical investigators, scientific experts and other officers and employees as may be provided for in the budget. The deputy chief medical examiners and medical examiners shall possess the same basic qualifications as the chief medical examiner. The medical investigators shall be physicians duly licensed to practice medicine in the state of New York and shall possess such additional qualifications as may be required by the department of citywide administrative services.
   (d)   The office shall be kept open every day in the year, including Sundays and legal holidays, with a clerk in attendance at all times during the day and night.
   (e)   The chief medical examiner or his or her designee shall have power to require the attendance and take testimony under oath of such persons as he or she may deem necessary and to require the production of books, accounts, papers and other evidence relative to any matter within the jurisdiction of the office.
   (f)   (1)   The chief medical examiner shall have such powers and duties as may be provided by law in respect to bodies of person dying from criminal violence, by accident, by suicide, suddenly when in apparent health, when unattended by a physician, in a correctional facility or in any suspicious or unusual manner or where an application is made pursuant to law for a permit to cremate a body of a person.
      (2)   The chief medical examiner shall perform the functions of the city mortuary and related functions, including the removal, transportation and disposal of unclaimed or unidentified human remains and the remains of those individuals who have died outside of a medical institution.
      (3)   The chief medical examiner may, to the extent permitted by law, provide forensic and related testing and analysis, and ancillary services, in furtherance of investigations concerning persons both alive and deceased, including but not limited to: performing autopsies; performing deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing and other forms of genetic testing and analysis; obtaining samples and exemplars; performing pathology, histology and toxicology testing and analysis; and determining the cause or manner of injuries and/or death.
      (4)   Notwithstanding any inconsistent provision of this section and in addition to any other powers and duties, the chief medical examiner may engage in health research in conjunction with the department consistent with paragraph two of subdivision d of section five hundred fifty six of this chapter.
   (g)   The chief medical examiner shall keep full and complete records in such form as may be provided by law. The chief medical examiner shall promptly deliver to the appropriate district attorney copies of all records relating to every death as to which there is, in the judgment of the medical examiner in charge, any indication of criminality. Such records shall not be open to public inspection.
Editor's note: For related unconsolidated provisions, see Administrative Code Appendix A at L.L. 1996/059.