site.btaForensic Medicine Draft Standard Ready - Health Minister

The draft forensic medicine medical standard is ready, Health Minister Hristo Hinkov said during his hearing before the Parliamentary Committee on Health about the established forensic medicine standard and if the rules and procedures were observed in the case of the disfigured 18-year-old girl.

The standard will be reviewed during a Tuesday meeting of the Health Ministry's leadership and it will be put up for public discussion, Hinkov added.

Commenting the case with the assaulted 18 year-old girl, Hinkov said that there must be a complex assessment of the crime and that the court is the one to take into account all pertinent circumstances. Forensic science is interdisciplinary and not purely medical.

He believes forensic scientists are in a very delicate situation, expressing doubts that the standard will ease their work.

The categories of trivial, medium and grievous bodily injury are clearly spelled out in the Penal Code, but the suffering and psychological trauma cannot be measured, said here on Monday Health Minister Hristo Hinkov while speaking to journalists ahead of his hearing in Parliament.

Answering a question, the Health Minister said that the bodily injury categories are spelled out clearly enough, but the issue is that judges take into account all other facts pertaining to the crime, based on which they decide the degree of cruelty with which this crime was committed, which is something that cannot be operationalized. The degree of a crime's cruelty cannot be measured, he added. What forensic medical experts do is to assess the facts pertaining to the bodily injury, which are clearly described in the Penal Code, he said.

Answering a question by BTA if the forensic medical expert who assessed the injuries of the assaulted 18 year-old girl as "trivial bodily injury", was dismissed wrongfully, Hinkov said that the physician in question "took one for the team for the sake of showing some type of response".