Nonmaleficence requires healthcare providers to abstain from causing harm to their patients (Beauchamp & Childress, 2013). If we again presume a definition that suspects and the accused both are considered patients, are we disproportionately causing harm to the accused when we conduct a forensic medical examination? One may argue that we are causing harm in the context of collecting samples that will be forensically analyzed and can be used to prove guilt. However, the forensic clinician does not know if the person receiving this forensic medical examination is guilty or innocent of the accusations or charges, just as the clinician does not know if a patient reporting an assault is being truthful or dishonest in the history provided or person identified of assaulting him/her. The forensic analysis of samples collected by a forensic clinician may assist in identifying the assailant and/or eliminate potential suspects. Harm, within the context of becoming incarcerated, is not due to a forensic medical examination. Being found guilty and incarcerated is secondary to acts committed by the person. Just as harm experienced if charges are dropped or found not guilty (e.g., loss of employment, wages, relationships) is related to protracted criminal and judicial processes, not the forensic medical examination. An outcomes-based approach to analyzing harm from a forensic medical examination would need to consider both the possibility of proving guilt and establishing innocence for each of the involved parties, the victim and the accused. Many consider the biopsychosocial harm that occurs during a sexual assault and the subsequent post-assault sequela. However, there have been high profile cases where innocent people have been convicted of crimes that they did not commit. A well-known case was portrayed in the book Picking Cotton (Thompson-Cannino et al., 2009). The book is a memoir of Jennifer Thompson, a victim of sexual assault, and Ronald Cotton, the person wrongly convicted of her assault and released after 48 eleven years in prison. Mr. Cotton and others like him, suffer the harm of loss of employment, years of their lives lost to detention, disenfranchisement from their families, loss of their homes, and more. Additional Considerations An exhaustive representation of practices that support inequities of forensic medical examinations is beyond the scope of this paper. However, there are several additional topics that should be mentioned. When forensic nurses state, “Our role is to collect evidence from the victim”, they highlight an all too common lack of understanding of forensic nursing. The Forensic Nursing Scope and Standards of Practice (2010) and the revised draft (2016) specifically remind forensic nurses of their duty to the accused, those who are suspected, and the accuser in criminal situations. Yet, this statement also brings to the surface a bias for supporting the legal case of the victim that may be present in an individual forensic nurse’s practice. Statements such as, “the nurse who does the victim exam can’t do the suspect exam” highlight a lack of critical thinking related to forensic principles and a double standard in practice that could be extrapolated again to favoring services for “victims”. The concern behind this statement may be twofold. One is a fear of cross-contamination if suspect and victim examinations are provided by the same clinician. However, this concern would appear illfounded as multiple victim cases with the same suspect or accused may be completed back-toback by the same nurse in the same exam room. A second concern is that the same nurse cannot interact with both the victim and the accused because of personal feelings, that is because his/her feelings of anger or judgment will override professionalism or exacerbate moral distress. This issue is worthy of further exploration. Health care clinicians in emergency settings regularly provide care for trauma patients, some of whom actively caused the trauma for themselves and 49 others. A common example is the driver of a vehicle, driven recklessly or while under the influence of drugs or alcohol, where passengers or bystanders were injured in addition to the driver. There is a strong movement related to trauma informed care for patients who are victims of assault or abuse. However, there are not similar discussions about trauma for the accused or suspects of the sexual offense, recalling that while some will be found guilty of a crime, others will be found innocent. Efforts to prevent victims and suspects from seeing each other are focused on trauma informed practices for the victim. There are no discussions, within a trauma informed care context, about trauma that may be experienced by a misidentified suspect seeing the victim, especially if the victim is in distress or has visible injuries. The same holds true for potential trauma experienced related to being wrongly accused or misidentified for a sexual offence. In sexual offenses involving condoms, there tends to be even less emphasis on obtaining forensic medical examination. Considering the sensitivity of current forensic science technologies for obtaining probative profiles from samples as small as a few skin cells, concerns about a limited amount of trace sample is an antiquated rationale for not collecting from the accused or suspects in a sexual offense case. Additionally, all involved in the decision making for