Cases like the incident last Friday when a body was wrongly identified prompted us to take a closer look at the steps coroners take to get identifications right.
Nicole Butler spoke to Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones on how the process works.
Death is a big part of life for Macon-Bibb's Chief coroner, Leon Jones.
"When we get a body we do everything in our power to identify the body right then," Jones says.
From asking neighbors for help to running tag numbers, they do it all.
Jones says when all else fails, they use fingerprints and check driver's licenses.
"Sometimes, driver's license ID is not a good form of identification because, you know, people change with age, beards, grey hair, stuff like that," he says.
Jones says his office tries to make 100 percent sure the deceased is correctly identified before the name gets released to the media.
However, he says there are rare times when they get it wrong.
"And that happens. This is a large city. It happens," Jones says.
He says they work hard to quickly correct their mistakes, but the biggest problem they run into is finding the next of kin.
"If something happened to your loved one wouldn't you want to know? I mean, it's just the right thing to do to do everything you can in your power to find the next of kin, and once we put it out in the media, we going to get phone calls," Jones says.
Jones says one of the biggest misconceptions is that families have to come and identify the body.
"You see that stuff on television, 'We need to come and identify the body.' We already know who the body is," he says.
He says they do not recommend family members looking at the body when it is in a traumatized state.
That being said he says Macon-Bibb will never refuse someone the right to see their loved one.
Jones says if the family does want to view the body, he tries to cover up parts of the trauma areas that may upset the family to give them a good last moment with their loved one.