Page:Redd v. State (1897).pdf/4

460 conclusively that the deceased had not committed suicide, and was therefore murdered. The testimony, however, upon which the verdict in this case is mainly founded is certain confessions and statements of defendant Redd, made to and detailed by others as witnesses on the trial, and, as to defendant Johnson, certain circumstances detailed by witness McKay, and sayings and conduct of Johnson testified to by McKay and others, which it was thought tended to incriminate that defendant.

The motion for new trial, omitting the usual formal grounds, sets forth the following grounds: inadmissibility of the testimony of W. F. Slemons; also the inadmissibility of the testimony of L. E. Morgan and that of W. C. Spain; the error of the court in giving the tenth instruction asked by the state, and in overruling the tenth and twelfth instructions asked by the defendant; and that the verdict was contrary to the evidence.

For the purpose of determining the question whether or not the deceased came to his death by murder or suicide, the expert testimony of a physician was taken as to whether or not, in similar cases, the muscles of the hands would be apt to remain rigid or relax after death, the fact in this case being that the pocket knife found in the hand of deceased was loose, and not held by a rigid grasp. In addition to this expert testimony, and apparently in support of it, the non-expert testimony of W. F. Sletnons and L. E. Morgan was introduced to prove by them, in the particular cases of suicide they had witnessed, committed in the same way as this one, if suicide at all, whether the muscles of the hands were contracted or relaxed after death.

While there are authorities which apparently sanction the introduction of such non-expert testimony, yet we think, upon the whole, such testimony is inadmissible, but that in the present case, however, the error