Court Opinion

ID: 9624730
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:15:21.166015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:53.788960
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(concurring in result) .
I concur in the result and suggest that the evidence about the alcohol content of the blood should not have been admitted in evidence. To take blood from a dead man for evidence, at the behest of a police officer, without the consent of relatives, without an autopsy or other official justification, is no different, except as to degree of repulsiveness, than decapitating a dead man to obtain evidence without such consent or sanction, and is a liberty taken such as enrages one’s sense of propriety and justice to the point that it should be inadmissible .in evidence. To hold otherwise encourages .indiscriminate and irresponsible mutilation of dead bodies and might actually lead to the death of a person, who, in fact was alive at the time of such mutilation, but who was thought to be dead by some irresponsible individual who may either order or execute the act of violating the person. It is no answer to say that this court' has placed the stamp of approval on admitting illegally obtained evidence — a practice whose sanction would not be shared by this writer, if not established by precedent. The evidence here is not so much illegally obtained as it is shocking to one’s sensibility, and it should be refused in evidence on the basis that it is so contrary to the American sense of justice as to be excludable.