Massachusetts Death Certificate: Fill & Download for Free

This is a supplement to Mr. Morrison‘s answer. The King family undertook a civil lawsuit in 1999 in Memphis, represented by Dr. William Pepper. 72 witnesses appeared in 13 days of testimony. One of them was Mr. Raymond Kohlman, an attorney from Massachusetts. His testimony begins at page 1258 of the trial transcript, which can be downloaded from the King family website.Mr. Kohlman checked in public records for information about Betty Butler and Paul L. Butler for the period 1966–1970.The Polk directory for 1966 listed “Paul (Betty) . . . 339 East South Parkway,” and said Paul Butler was a Yellow Cab driver.The 1967 Polk directory lists “Paul . . . (Betty)” again.The 1968 Polk directory lists Betty as the widow of Paul Butler.The 1969 Polk directory lists Betty as the widow of Paul Butler.Mr. Kohlman then tried to get a death certificate for Paul L. Butler. At Memphis/Shelby County no certificate was found. He tried also in Arkansas to get a death certificate. None was found.

This answer may contain sensitive images. Click on an image to unblur it.Just to clarify a few things — the age-adjusted mortality rate directly attributed to dementia on death certificates (Alzheimer, vascular dementia, other and not otherwise specified) approximately doubled nationally from 2000 to 2017. Because this is age-adjusted (that is, normalized to a standard and fixed population profile for the reporting period) it is unrelated to changes in the age structure of the population over that time. That is, it is NOT because “people are getting older.”Here's the relevant data viz from a 2019 CDC report using a national census of death certificates https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_02-508.pdfThe “why” is really not known. State-level data (map above) shows huge variation and weird patterns — Massachusetts has a rate nearly twice that of neighboring NY. Utah, Oregon, and Minnesota, notably low-smoking rate, high health states, have rates comparable to Alabama, South Carolina and Kentucky, which are not so characterized. That is, it's unlike cancer or stroke rates at the group level.My own best guess is that this is an artifact from requiring a primary cause of death on death certificates, combined with rising awareness of dementia as a condition. Recent work has shown that dementia is more likely to be coded on the death certificate now than in the recent past (Reporting of clinically diagnosed dementia on death certificates: retrospective cohort study that looked at death certificates for people with clinical diagnoses of dementia), and, that changing from ICD-9 to ICD-10 for mortality reporting (which happened in 1999) — e.g. from Assessing Validity of ICD-9-CM and ICD-10 Administrative Data in Recording Clinical Conditions in a Unique Dually Coded DatabaseThe high sensitivity for dementia in ICD-10, meanwhile, may be related to the fact that ICD-10 groups dementias together as dementia in Alzheimer's disease (F00), vascular dementia (F01), dementia in other diseases classified elsewhere (F02), and unspecified dementia (F03). In contrast, ICD-9-CM does not group dementias together in the coding system as is done in ICD-10. The detailed grouping of “dementia” in ICD-10 may thus facilitate the work of coders in locating dementia codes, with the downstream result being an increase in the accuracy of coding.

It depends on where the death occurred. In the US, there are ten states including California, Massachusetts, and North Carolina, where death certificates are considered by law to be part of the public record, and therefore any individual record can be inspected by the public. In other states the cause if death may be redacted, or the record may be closed entirely (that's true in 30 states).You will need to contact the relevant vital records office at the state or county level to find out what the case is in the jurisdiction where the death occurred. Same holds true for autopsy reports - public record in Louisiana and Texas, closed in many other states.