A death certificate is signed by an attending physician and filed electronically and it is not audited at the point of filing.

The system assumes the signature means what it says.

The authorization for cremation. Signed by Fernando Vance at 11:20 on the Sunday morning, six hours after a pronouncement.

Texas requires a waiting period before cremation and it requires a permit and it requires the medical examiner’s office to sign off, and all three of those had been complied with — properly, by a funeral home that does everything properly — which is the only reason the cremation was Thursday morning and not Monday afternoon.

The law slowed it down by four days.