State v. David

Sea

The theory upon which the State sought conviction was that the defendant brought about the death of the deceased through asphyxiation, or carbon monoxide poisoning, from gas issuing from a partially opened jet of the kitchen stove. When the autopsy was performed by the experts who testified for the State, the blood had been removed from the body in the embalming process, and it was admittedly impossible to make from the tissues of the body a conclusive quantitative analysis as to the degree of saturation. The necessity of establishing the cause of death by expert evidence and the important…