Court Opinion

ID: 9721735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:07:14.759692+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:28.317159
License: Public Domain

Concurring Opinion
Achor, C. J.
I concur in the majority opinion on the basis of the facts therein stated and the controlling propositions of law applicable thereto. However, I *610do not thereby intend to add precedent to nor extend the proposition of law enunciated in the case of Keifer v. State (1958), 239 Ind. 103, 117, 153 N. E. 2d 899, that pictures of a deceased victim of a murder, taken during autopsy, may not be introduced in evidence because they do not “correctly show” the wounds which were the cause of death. If such pictures serve to establish the cause of death they are material and, therefore, admissible.
In my opinion the fact that it may be necessary to open a wound with the use of instruments, etc., in order to demonstrate the size, depth and nature of the penetration, such unnatural opening of the wound does not render pictures thereof inadmissible, even though such an exposure of the internal human anatomy may be gruesome and therefore offensive to the sensitivities of members of the jury.
Murder, by its very nature, is a gruesome “business.” One who takes the life of another human being cannot, with propriety, object to the full exposure of the wounds which he inflicted upon the body of his victim, merely because such evidence may tend to inflame the jury.
Arterburn, J., concurs.
Note. — Reported in 180 N. E. 2d 233.