Dr. Baden, in your experience as a medical examiner in testimony before juries, what is the standard that a professional medical examiner should use in rendering scientific medical opinions?
The standard, in my opinion, should be and usually is to a reasonable degree--opinion held to a reasonable degree of medical or scientific certainty.
Are possibilities the type of evidence and testimony a professional medical examiner should give in a homicide case?
You have seen eight days of direct examination which involved many, many hypothetical situations that are based on possibilities. In your opinion is this a correct way for a professional medical examiner to offer testimony?
You have seen lots of demonstrations that were done in this case between Mr. Kelberg and Dr. Lakshmanan?
And you heard questions answered--asked, "And in your opinion, doctor, is it possible," did you not?
Did you understand that the testimony that was given by Dr. Lakshmanan was not testimony related to a reasonable degree of medical certainty?
What is your opinion of professionals who give medical opinions that are not to a reasonable degree of medical certainty?
Physicians learn in medical school early on that anything is possible in medicine, so any question that goes to a physician is it possible, that almost has to be answered yes and doesn't--and gives the cloak of expertise on a--an answer that may only list possibilities that are--that are remote. Unfortunately the expert, like Dr. Lakshmanan and like myself, usually are confined to answer the questions that lawyers give us, so Dr. Lakshmanan did answer questions that I felt were possibilities, but in my opinion it doesn't help the finders of fact because anything is possible.
So would it be your opinion that possibilities have no significance when coming to medical conclusions regarding expert testimony?
In my opinion it would have very little significance. If an answer is only to a possibility. If our expertise permits us to give an answer to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, which is upwards of like 95 percent, I think that could be helpful to the persons who are trying the facts, but a possibility might be one percent possibility which I think can be misleading many times.
And did you find that many of the hypotheticals that were done here were misleading from a scientific medical point of view?
I want to direct your attention toward the role of a medical examiner in crime scene investigation. Are you familiar with that aspect of medical examinations from a forensic point of view?
Would you say that a medical examiner or Coroner is merely a body removal service at the scene of a crime?
Often medical examiners are used in that fashion, but I think that a medical examiner is absolutely not a body removal service, but an expert who contributes a lot to the investigation at the crime scene.
In your opinion then, the role of a medical examiner extends beyond the bounds of the autopsy room?
What, in your opinion, should a medical examiner do at a crime scene investigation such as the crime scene we have in this case involving the murders of Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson?
In my opinion, the best information and the greatest information can be obtained from going promptly to the scene of death, from examining the scene and the environment, not just the body. The last thing the medical examiner does is to examine the body, because the body can be reviewed under better light in the autopsy room, but the circumstances, the trace evidence, the building that the body is found in are all important parts of the scene.
What should the medical examiner be looking for and why at the scene of the crime?
The medical examiner should be looking for anything that might be helpful in determining how to proceed with the case, what--what to do, whether an autopsy should be done, to collect any evidence that might be present, to learn anything about the decedent that might be helpful in helping perform an informed autopsy. Not all autopsies are the same. Some autopsies require different types of examination of the body than others to determine if there is any medications, any alcohol, any drugs at the scene, which can't be done once the body is removed to the autopsy room, which may help in determining again what should be looked for at the autopsy, what toxicology should be done. To look for things that are unexpected. We don't know when we go to a scene of death what we are looking at. As Watson asked Holmes, "What are you looking for?"
Doctor, would there be a reason at the residence of Nicole Brown Simpson for a medical examiner to go in the home where the bodies were found adjacent to?
Oh, absolutely. The scene of death is one area, but the home would be very important to see if there is any evidence of when the person was last in the residence, to see what the person last ate, to see what is in the garbage can, to see what is on the stove, to see what is in the refrigerator, that kind of material, to then correlate with autopsy findings, to see in this instance how long the candles had been burning, for example, which one of the important areas that a medical examiner can contribute to is not so much the cause of death, but is the time of death, which is one of the responsibilities the medical examiner has, to look for any evidence that will assist in further--in how the autopsy should be done and what drugs to look for, whether the person has been sick, if there are any notes around, anything that can help in determining how the person died and how the person may have left trace evidence behind, what the bed looked like, whether there is any spots or stains on the bed, whether there was a struggle inside the house, whether there were bloodstains around in the house or not. These are all part of what the medical examiner has to look for again to be able to do an intelligent autopsy.
All right. In this particular case, what would be the importance, in your opinion, of going into the refrigerator of Nicole Brown Simpson?
Well, in the refrigerator in this particular case it would be important to know what food was in the refrigerator so that when the autopsy is done it can be correlated with whatever was present in the stomach, because we know out front, as a medical examiner, that the last meal had some significance. Was the last meal either at home, was it eaten elsewhere? And we can tell that by--by correlating what is present at autopsy in the stomach contents with whatever is purported to have been the last meal or whatever may be present in the refrigerator or in the garbage or in the sink in the kitchen.
What about the clothing on the bodies of the victims at the scene? Is that something that comes in with--comes within the purview of a medical examination from a forensic standpoint?
Yes. Anything on the body is usually the province of the medical examiner as opposed to the criminalist who is gathering information away from the body, and the clothing on the body, whether there is any kind of foreign stains on the clothing, whether any foreign materials. We have to be able to identify, preserve, collect any evidences that might be present at the scene that might be lost in transport, because once that body is moved from the scene it has to go in some kind of body bag container where valuable evidences can be lost sometimes if not collected at the scene. And in this instance that was certainly--proved to be true.
Can that be evidence that can point to someone's innocence as well as someone's guilt?
And what kind of evidence was lost in this case by the way the Coroner transported the body, in your opinion?
Was there any evidence that could have been preserved properly that was not at the crime scene?
Well, there were blood drops on the back of Miss Simpson that should have been examined to determine who the blood came from. Maybe it came from the perpetrator. There was material on the hands. Often in struggle the victim has evidence, trace evidences of hairs and fibers and blood on the hands that becomes--that can be lost if the hands are not properly covered during transportation by rubbing against the rest of the body, and the hand may collect other kind of evidence by--by being left unprotected in the wrappings of the entire body. I think those two areas evidence could have been better protected and preserved and that would have helped resolve in the investigation.
Is there a team approach to this effort? Since you have the police out there, you have detectives, investigators, possibly paramedics, the medical examiner, does this work as a team effort?
And how does that--how is that coordinated and what is the different responsibilities--what is the responsibility of the Coroner as part of this team?
Yes. The Coroner is there to examine the body, to protect the body, to protect any evidence on the body and to determine how the body should be moved. The pathologist--the medical examiner has to worked with the police officers who are present so as not to intrude on the police officer's investigation or the criminalist's investigation, and this is commonly done cooperatively between--among the medical examiner, among the criminalist.
The medical examiner has to be aware of any resuscitative attempts. Certainly if there is any thought that a person is alive the emergency medical services respond and the medical examiner has to be able to distinguish what was done by the first responders, whoever found the body, was present before the first responders, what the first responders might have contributed to the scene. There are many aspects of the scene investigation that a medical examiner can contribute to when working together with the--usually the criminalist in not distorting any evidence.
Would you agree that then the medical examiner's job is at the scene to determine more what happened, rather than who did it?
Yes. The medical examiner's role in general is we are concerned with what happened and to document what happened, not who done it.
And is the medical examiner's job to try to come to an immediate conclusion and then justify it, or just the opposite?
Oh, no, no, no. The medical examiner's job is to collect whatever information is there, to document whatever information is present, to protect whatever information is present, so that it can then be interpreted as the different tests are done and different results come through; not to jump to conclusions.
So the medical examiner is not there as an arm of the police or an arm of the District Attorney, is he or she?
In my opinion the medical examiner should be independent of the District Attorney, independent of the Prosecutor, independently arrive at whatever findings he or she may have, but work cooperatively with the Prosecutor and the police. And there is--often it is difficult. It is often difficult to do that in a community, but the medical examiner should be independent of the other--the medical examiner is not an advocate.
In a homicide investigation, such as the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, in your opinion should the medical examiner perform an analysis for sexual activity of recent nature?
I think any young woman who is murdered, and even older women, the sexual analysis, sexual evidence collection kit should be performed because there may be evidence present that can only be determined in the laboratory. We can't look at a--at an adult--a child--we can look at a child and tell if there is sexual assault or not, but not in an adult woman, especially a woman who has had children, and this depends on the results of--the so-called rape kit isn't just semen analysis, it is hairs and fibers and blood and saliva, a lot of evidence collection that can be useful in documenting findings and in contributing to trace evidence and that just--and we can't tell as medical examiners whether there has been forced sexual contact, whether there has been consensual sexual contact. Even that is important to the medical examiner to--to determine who might last have had contact with the woman in a murder investigation. That individual may be important.
And in your experience has in fact these things that you have just told the jury been important in cases that you have been involved in?
Yes. We've done rape kits on even eighty-year old women who have been murdered who surprisingly had semen in the vagina that was not recognized at the scene that led to identifying who murderers were, so I think that it is an important tool of the medical examiner to do a rape kit analysis, especially in young women.
You've told the ladies and gentlemen of the jury that it is important, in your opinion, for a medical examiner to make a determination of when and how much the victims in this case last ate; is that correct?
Now, in this case the testimony has been that Ronald Goldman's stomach contents were saved and Nicole Brown Simpson's stomach contents were discarded. Is that your understanding?
Now, with the stomach contents that were saved of Ronald Goldman, what can somebody who has your qualifications determine from examining stomach contents?
My qualification? Any forensic pathologist can examine the stomach contents carefully under magnification and find what was eaten at the last meal, and that can be important sometimes. We don't know when we do the examination what is going to be important and what isn't going to be important later on. That is why we have to collect everything. And we can determine what was eaten at the last meal and we can get a good idea of when it was eaten, so the--the part of the investigation into time of death goes not only by how the body changes after death, rigor mortis, lividity, temperature that has been raised here, but to correlate it with the last meal. If we know what the last meal was and when it was--what the last meal was, we can then get an idea of how long after the meal the person died.
The food digests in a certain pattern and we eat food and we digest food in a certain way and we can identify starches and meats, but most particularly vegetables. Vegetables keep their integrity because of the chelose constants and lettuce and tomatoes are easily identified during digestion. Mummies 2000 years old have been identified with tomato seeds in the stomach and seeds and other vegetables stay intact once the person dies, so we have a good time clock as to what is in the stomach, how long it takes to get that way, what the last meal was, sometimes how long after the last meal the person died.
So you are saying that you can actually separate and segregate different items of food in a stomach and look at them and see that they would be lettuce or tomato or celery, things like that? Can do you that?
Not all pathologists. You see, 99 percent of the pathologists are hospital-based pathologists who specialize in natural diseases, like heart disease and cancer, but the less than one percent who are forensic pathologists who go on to study unnatural death more are trained to do that, yes.
In this case, were you afforded an opportunity to examine the stomach contents of Ronald Goldman?
In Albany Medical Center in March of--in February of this year when the evidence was sent up from the Los Angeles crime lab. Dr. Lakshmanan at our request was kind enough to include the stomach contents and Dr. Wolf and I were able to--and Dr. Lee were able to examine the stomach contents at Albany Medical Center.
Mr. Goldman had a lot of digested food in his stomach, had about 200 cc, which is about six, seven ounces of food that was being digested in the stomach. And within that there were identifiable fragments of a kale, k-a-l-e, kale-like compound, thick lettuce type vegetable. There was tomato, there was celery, there were raisins that were clearly identifiable.
KEY QUOTESo if you knew from eyewitnesses what Mr. Goldman had as his last meal, and you found, for example, he had a salad but there was no raisins in it, what would that tell you as a forensic medical examiner?
That would indicate that after he had eaten that meal and after he went home, he ate or at some other place he ate something that had raisins in it and so he must have eaten something containing raisins after he had that meal you refer to.
So if there was a proper and thorough investigation, it is your expert opinion that someone could determine with a reasonable degree of medical certainty whether or not Mr. Goldman ate something after Mezzaluna?
As to when he ate and what he ate at Mezzaluna and it would be helpful to know about the time he ate also.
Though I take it now obviously since you could not do any examination of Nicole Simpson's stomach contents, since they were thrown away, we are forever deprived of that evidence?
Well, Dr. Golden did describe stomach contents in the autopsy report and he does include mention of some food stuffs, including rigatoni that he saw.
In that regard did you find things, in examining the stomach contents of Ronald Goldman, that were not included in the autopsy findings?
Much of--I think that, as I recall, without going into the autopsy report, the lettuce-like material was described in Ron Goldman's stomach contents but not the tomato and raisin and celery, and green pepper I think also present that we found and documented.
Now, in the findings of Dr. Golden in the autopsy protocol regarding Nicole Brown Simpson there was an indication that her stomach had recognizable rigatoni?
How quickly does pasta get digested in the stomach to a point where it could not be recognizable as rigatoni?
Rigatoni and pastas and starches lose their integrity very quickly in the stomach, in the stomach acids. They don't maintain their identifiable characteristics as vegetables do, so that rigatoni and that type of pasta would lose its distinct shape very quickly, half hour, depending on--on what else is in the stomach.
If there was testimony that Nicole Brown Simpson had rigatoni at Mezzaluna restaurant between eight o'clock and 8:30 P.M. on the night of her death and talked to her mother at about 9:45, 9:47 that night, and it was discovered that there was rigatoni that was recognizable in her system, after her death, would that have any significance to you?
That would suggest that she ate something containing rigatoni after she--after the meal at Mezzaluna and perhaps after she got home.
So that would be one reason why you would want to check the refrigerator, the garbage disposal and the waste basket?
I want to direct your attention now to the areas that a medical examiner focuses on in a homicide investigation. Would you agree that one of the things that the medical examiner must determine is the cause of death?
In your opinion would any competent medical examiner be able to determine the cause of death?
Any competent medical examiner? Any competent police officer could rapidly determine the cause of death, as was done here.
KEY QUOTECause of death was hemorrhage from cut wounds and stab wounds in both individuals, actually in both, from cuts to the neck area.
Yeah. By manner of death we mean natural, accident, suicide, homicide, and a come medical examiner, competent police officer as here, immediately determined that this was a homicide. That was the manner of death and they were correct.
Well, the--in this instance the cause of death, the manner of death were very apparent right at the crime scene, and when the police called the case in, the deaths in, they said homicides by stabbings and cuttings. The medical examiner has more of a role in determining how the injuries occurred, the nature of the injuries, what kind of weapons were--weapon or weapons were involved, how long the person may have lived after the injuries were inflicted. Those are all things that a medical examiner can determine. The medical examiner also at the scene can help in determining how long the person has been dead, which is the most common question that is asked of a medical examiner at a scene by the police. "Doc, how long has the person been dead?" Because that is going to be helpful in the investigation as to who should be questioned by the police. And the medical examiner has a great and increasing responsibility, all this DNA technology--and that didn't exist ten years ago--the medical examiner has a responsibility to protect the evidence so that other scientists can look at it to make sure that the blood and the semen present or hairs and fibers don't get lost or, umm, distorted in the removal of the body, which is a delicate process, from the crime scene to the medical examiner's office, the Coroner's office, and that everything is identified, all trace evidence is identified, protected, collected, so that others can, you know, DNA people, criminalists, toxicologists, lab directors, can do their work properly.
In your personal experience of coming to conclusions in other high-profile murder cases as to the number of killers involved, you have been called upon to reach conclusions; is that correct?
And in this case can you tell, within a reasonable degree of medical certainty how many killers were involved in this case?
The medical examiner can't. The medical examiner from the nature of the injuries, the wounds and the crime scene, is not--cannot tell how many assailants there were.
In your opinion can the medical examiner in this case tell whether or not the killings resulted from a single or double-edged knife?
The medical examiner can say that a single-edged knife was involved, but the medical examiner cannot say how many knives were involved and whether or not a number of the wounds were caused by double-edged blades, too. So the medical examiner cannot tell how many weapons and whether they were single and double-edged.
Is there a proper procedure that is acceptable throughout the United States to make a determination regarding whether a single or double-edged weapon was used in a stabbing case, based on photographs?
Photographs can be helpful, but the--it is the responsibility of the person doing the autopsy--
The best evaluation is by--at the time of the autopsy by looking at the wounds, by approximating the wounds and by documenting that so that can then be photographed so others can see it and that can help very much in determining whether the wound is single-edged or double-edged.
How does a medical examiner, under the standard practice in the United States, approximate a wound?
Umm, by--by initially taking the fingers and reapproximating the skin surfaces, because after a stabbing, depending on how the body tissues and elastic tissues and the skin is situated at that point, the--the stab wound will--may expand and widen or stay just the way it is, depending on unpredictable things under the skin. And the medical examiner can get a good shape of what the weapon was by taking the skin edges and putting them together as they were before the--the wound stretched out, making those observations and then taking a piece of scotch tape and putting it over the transparent scotch tape over the wound, holding the edges together, photographing it so that--with a ruler, so that this becomes a documentation of the shape of the weapon at that point in the skin. And this correlated with how deep the stab wound is can lead to the medical examiner providing the investigators with information as to what kind of weapon they should be looking for.
So the standard practice would be to take some scotch tape and just put it over the wound?
Yeah, scotch tape is very handy because--especially the non-reflective scotch tape, because it provides a hold on the skin so that the edges are reproximated. One can see if the edge is sharp or blunt. One gets a sense of the size of the wound. Sometimes one can even see serrations in a serrated knife, and then with proper photography, with a photograph, document that shape. And this can then be matched later on with weapons that are obtained and the medical examiner can identify whether this is consistent or inconsistent with the wound on the body.
Now, a picture was shown from a medical text, while you were here, to Dr. Lakshmanan. Do you recall that?
And do you recall his opinion was that was taken only for the purpose of taking a picture to show in the book?
No, that should be standard procedure. That is what Dr. Spitz in that book was trying to show is how it should be done.
Can you, as an expert medical examiner to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, tell the height of the assailant or assailants in this case?
Can you, as an expert medical examiner within a reasonable degree of medical certainty, tell the weight of the perpetrator or perpetrators?
Can you, as an expert medical examiner, within a reasonable degree of medical certainty, tell the physique of the perpetrator or perpetrators?
Would you say you would have as much chance as determining whether or not somebody had a mustache from observing ashes in a cremation as you could of coming up with whether--what the size, weight and height was of the perpetrators in this case?
KEY QUOTERegarding the timing of injuries, can this be based on the appearance of injuries in a photograph?
Because part of the--of the timing of injuries, how long an injury has been present, is based on color changes, and that is very dependent on the color film, the speed, the flash and how it is developed. The naked eye direct visualization is very helpful and looking at the tissue under the microscope is the best means of determining how long an injury has been present in general.
And so that I understand you correctly, and the jury does, that when we are talking about timing of injuries, we are talking about whether it occurred before death, at the time of death or after death?
Okay. That--I was going--how long before death an injury occurs and also the same applies for distinguishing whether--or trying to distinguish whether an injury occurred after death or before death, but that also is very difficult and often impossible.
It is difficult to tell in general; not only from photographs, because we can look at a--when we look at a black eye changing or when we look at something under the microscope, it is because the body starts breaking down the red blood cells. If I bruise myself, I get a hemorrhage, I break little blood vessels, I get a hemorrhage under the skin, that is a black and blue mark. The body then does all kind of things to get rid of the blood that doesn't belong there and white blood sells come in within an hour or two, that we look at a reaction of the body to get rid of the blood. And the red cells break apart. They start breaking down and that is why the black and blue mark might turn green and yellow and brown as the red cells break down and then eventually they are removed. If a person dies within half an hour of receiving an injury, there isn't time for the body's reaction to be visible under the microscope or the changes to be present, and those injuries look very much like an injury that occurs a half hour after death. And bleeding alone is not sufficient to distinguish an injury before death or after, say, from a cut wound, because even when we die, when we die the blood vessels are chalked full of blood, the blood stays normally right in the blood vessels, vacuums don't occur. And the next day when we do an autopsy bleeding occurs, it is passive bleeding from the blood that is already in the blood vessels. And if somebody is cut after death, one can have a little bit of bleeding that looks like it was before death and people can become cut before death without much bleeding, depending on how the skin capillaries shut down, how the blood vessels shut down. So any injury that occurs around the time of death may be very difficult to interpret when doing the autopsy and become even more impossible if one is just relying on photographs.
Now, would relying on photographs, would you say, as an expert medical examiner, that you could not conclude with a reasonable degree of medical certainty the timing of injuries, based on photographs alone?
Depending on the timing. That is if I'm asked could this injury have occurred two days ago and it is beginning to change colors, I might be able to do something like that, but it is not possible, in my opinion, to tell the difference between an injury that occurs five minutes before death, cutting injury, as in these instances, with one that occurs five minutes after death, unless there is a great deal of evidence of the body pumping out blood. You see, the--the pumping action of the heart indicates the person was alive, but passive flow of blood doesn't help.
Now, so if opinions are given, and I think terms are used like perimortem and postmortem--those are the medical terms?
Those are things that you cannot rely on from photographs shortly before, at the time of or shortly after?
That you cannot reasonably rely on those just based on photographs or colors and photographs?
What about this idea of somebody being--well, Mr. Goldman being stabbed in this manner and being on the ground and somebody coming up with a knife and kind of poking at his cheek like you would like--well, I don't want to use the analogy from somebody else--a poking on the cheek to see whether he were alive or not? Do you have any experience about that? Do you have any opinion about that?
You also heard this testimony about these kind of superficial taunting wounds or control wounds to Mr. Goldman. Did you hear that testimony that was offered?
In the medical--are you familiar, in the common practice of forensic pathology, with a term "Control wound"?
It is not part of forensic pathologic diagnosis. There are control marks on a body from--from having the wrists tied together. You can see marks, you can see handcuff marks on the wrists sometimes, but not in the nature they were--that the testimony was with Mr. Goldman, in my opinion.
And you heard the testimony of Dr. Lakshmanan that in his opinion these wounds that he described as control wounds or taunting wounds occurred before the cutting of the jugular vein of Mr. Goldman. Did you hear that testimony?
I think the cutting of the jugular vein occurred early on in the--in the struggle that he had and led to his death by hemorrhage over a period of many minutes of hemorrhage from the jugular vein. The cuts on the--the other cuts on the neck could have happened after that and near the time of death, because there is very little bleeding in those, but I--that could have happened after the cut wound in the neck.
Yes. He had a healing cut on the middle finger of the left hand and healing cuts--smaller cuts on the inside of the left middle finger and on the outside--what I'm saying--there were cuts on the fourth and fifth fingers, in the skin between the fourth and fifth fingers.
All right. Let's focus in particular on the middle finger of the left hand above the knuckle.
That has in previous testimony been referred to as a fishhook injury or cut. Do you have any opinion as to what type of material caused that cut?
Yes. My opinion, when I examined the skin, the healing on Friday, that is about four or five days after it occurred, after the injury occurred, was that it was irregular and more likely due to a broken piece of glass than to a sharp knife.
KEY QUOTENow, I want you to assume hypothetically that that injury happened in Los Angeles and that Mr. Simpson, with that injury, got on a plane in Los Angeles to Chicago and that injury was not observed by anyone and no one observed any bandages, Band-Aids or any type of splint on that finger. In your opinion, if that would had healed before the person--had stopped bleeding before Mr. Simpson had got on the plane, if he was on that plane for an entire trip from Los Angeles to Chicago, what is the likelihood of that unbandaged finger reopening and bleeding?
I think there is a--it was likely to bleed further in the course of that--an unprotected trip like that.
Regarding--is there anything significant about the place of the injury on the knuckle and the closing of a hand?
Yes. It overlaid the knuckles so that when the fingers would be opened and closed it would tend to disturb the clot that was developing and could easily open up for some bleeding to occur. And if it were unprotected by a Band-Aid or bandage, it would be easy--any contact with a chair, with luggage, with movement, would--could cause it to open even, so I think that it would be very likely to bleed further or to be obvious, it would be an obvious wound on the knuckle under those circumstances.
Now, regarding the superficial cuts that you've observed on the sides of the fingers, do you have any opinion as to how long those would bleed before clotting?
They would bleed less profusely, they were less deep, they were smaller and they weren't over the knuckle area. They were in a protected place so that they could clot and stop bleeding more easily than a cut that was present over the knuckle.
Are these as likely as the knuckle to reopen and bleed, if unprotected or unbandaged?
Now, assume Mr. Simpson cut his hand at his residence that resulted in these smaller types of cuts on his finger and he got these injuries at about ten o'clock. How long would you anticipate he would bleed.
A possibility might be one percent possibility which I think can be misleading many times.
Any competent medical examiner? Any competent police officer could rapidly determine the cause of death, as was done here.
Mr. Goldman had a lot of digested food in his stomach... within that there were identifiable fragments of a kale, k-a-l-e, kale-like compound, thick lettuce type vegetable. There was tomato, there was celery, there were raisins that were clearly identifiable.
My opinion, when I examined the skin, the healing on Friday, that is about four or five days after it occurred, was that it was irregular and more likely due to a broken piece of glass than to a sharp knife.
Would you say you would have as much chance as determining whether or not somebody had a mustache from observing ashes in a cremation as you could of coming up with whether what the size, weight and height was of the perpetrators in this case?