Despite Michelle Trachtenberg’s sudden death at age 39, the late actress’ family objected to an autopsy, leaving her cause of death to be ruled as “undetermined.”
Questions lingered in the wake of the decision, and now legal expert Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Lawyers, is breaking down why this would have occurred in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE.
According to Rahmani, an autopsy is “not required by law unless the circumstances of the death are suspicious.”
Rahmani says if Trachtenberg’s death was being investigated with suspicion of foul play, such as murder, a medical examiner would be required by law to perform an autopsy in order to hold a suspect accountable.
“If it’s a suicide, if it’s a natural death [or] those types of cases where no one’s going to be prosecuted, the autopsy is not required by law,” he explains. “The problem is sometimes we’ve seen autopsies become public, and the family members will actually file lawsuits to keep autopsies private because sometimes there’s information in the autopsy that can cast a bad light on the deceased.”
The lawyer notes in instances of alcohol or drug-related deaths, family members may want to keep anything found from going public since the information would be unlikely to add to the case.
“They can also reject them for religious reasons or privacy reasons,” Rahmani continues. “Some of it is because of religious issues, privacy issues, closure. [In the case of] natural death or even suicide, the family may not want to prolong the process of the burial and the wake.”
He adds that the autopsy process can take time and “slow” down the grieving process of the deceased’s loved ones.
However, Rahmani emphasizes that an autopsy would still be performed, despite religious circumstances, if there’s a potential prosecution for murder.
“You can’t destroy evidence. If they think that someone’s been killed, it’s a homicide,” he says. “The family can’t cremate a body right away. That would be just like any other type of evidence. That body needs to be preserved for a medical examiner who’s going to prepare a report, then he or she will testify at trial.”
On Feb. 26, NYPD confirmed that Trachtenberg was found dead when law enforcement responded to a 911 call around 8 a.m. in New York City. When officers arrived, they found a woman, identified as Trachtenberg, unconscious and unresponsive. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
At the time, police confirmed that “criminality is not suspected.”
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Per the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, the actress’ family objected to an autopsy, leaving Trachtenberg, whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Germany and Russia, and her cause of death to be “undetermined.”
The medical examiner was only allowed to conduct an external exam of Trachtenberg’s body due to her family’s request.
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