Texas is facing a shortage in medical examiners, leaving counties like Williamson County without one. In response, the county’s four justices of the peace take on the role as coroner. They operate on a four-week rotation to be on call to rule on natural death, homicide, suicides and overdoses. Their responsibilities include handling death inquest and determining the manner and times of death.
“No other elected official in the county is having to deal with this issue in the manner that we are,” Justice of the Peace Precinct Two Judge Angela Williams said. “We are the ones on call one week out of the month, sometimes twice a month. We are the ones woken up all night long, handling all of these emotional heightened situations with family members.”
After 10 years of requesting a medical examiner, the County Commissioners and Judge Bill Gravell granted four death investigators, with an initial budget of $309,083. On Dec. 10 county commissioners voted on an additional $47,827 to the budget.
“I’m thankful that the Williamson County commissioners court addressed the necessary need for death investigators to be hired in 2025 to accommodate the growing number of inquest,” Williams said.
The Justices of the Peace take turns going on call for a week, with each starting from Thursday at 5 p.m. and ending the following Thursday at 5 p.m.
“My family is very aware and I let them know I’m going on call,” Wiliams said. “They understand that if they see me get a call, everything stops and my immediate focus is on handling [the situation]. So family life is interrupted all throughout the day, and evening.”
The lack of adequate staffing for medical examiners in Williamson County, leads to dependence on a 3rd party, Hill Country Forensics and the Travis County Medical Examiner’s office. The county spends two million dollars a year in transporting and processing autopsies.
“Forty five counties are relying on Travis County Medical Examiner’s office to perform their autopsies because they don’t have a medical examiner either,” Williams said. “Their turnaround time is going to take a longer period. If Williamson County had their own medical examiner’s office, autopsy reports have the potential to be processed sooner.”
The four justices of the peace visited all four precincts for a community forum where they presented the need of a medical examiner.
“The four of us put our political differences aside and our different personalities and we said, we’re going to work together as one body,” Williams said. “We are going to work together because we know this is a public concern and we should be handling our county individuals that die with the utmost respect. That’s what we’re doing, but we need additional resources to help us.”
The Williamson County, Texas estimated 2024 population is 722,109 with a growth rate of 3.57% in the past year according to the most recent United States census data. According to KXAN Texas law requires counties with over 2.5 million population to have a medical examiner.
“I would say in the beginning it was disheartening,” Williams said. “The county sees the growth and they’ve had to accommodate with additional parks, roads and bridges. With the influx of the population increasing, unfortunately, that is going to result in more deaths. There has never been any support brought to the Justice of the Peace to accommodate the amount of inquest.”
The four justices worked together by reaching out to their communities by attending meetings together. When they had differences upon something they didn’t agree on, they talked it out amongst themselves.
“We wanted to bring this issue to the public and that is one of the reasons why we went to the media is because we could not get any resolution or any help in this issue,” Williams said. “We took it to our bosses who are ultimately the voters. We’ll just try to keep doing this to the best of our ability.”