Greg Vincent, chief medical examiner from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, told the Connecticut Infant Mortality Review Committee that laboratory confirmation of caregiver intoxication is uncommon and that reviewers often must rely on scene reports.

"Sometimes you have cases where the person is impaired at the scene, but they don't by the time they get the testing done," Vincent said. "It's very rare that we have actual lab testing supporting that a caretaker was, inebriated or intoxicated. It's usually, based on sort of information from the police or first responders at the scene." He added that the absence of hard clinical evidence makes some determinations "cannot determine."

The comments came during the committee's regular meeting while members were introducing themselves and handling routine business. Vincent's explanation underscores a forensic limitation the panel faces when attempting to assign cause or contributing factors in infant death cases: clinical toxicology sampled after a delay may not reflect a caretaker's condition at the time of the incident.

Committee members present included clinicians, state public-health and social-service staff, and data abstractors who support case review and data collection. No formal vote or change in policy on evidence standards was recorded in the public meeting. The committee moved into an executive session after the public portion concluded to review confidential cases.

The committee did not record any new procedural guidance or rule changes about how intoxication findings should be weighed; Vincent's remarks described current practice and the limits of the available forensic evidence.