Court Opinion

ID: 9738736
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:01:43.503583+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:08.187506
License: Public Domain

BUCHANAN, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully suggest that the majority have weighed the evidence.
During the examination of Dr. Benz, the pathologist, the following exchange occurred:
Dr. Benz: It’s my opinion that Edna Finkbaum died as a result of a closed head injury, I would say traumatic injury to the head which resulted in injuries to the brain and a formation of a blood clot which had been removed surgically.
*86Dr. Benz: Traumatic injury would be an injury produced as a result of trauma, some blow or the head striking a fixed object.
Prosecutor: Doctor, if I told you that the decedent was involved in an automobile accident in which the automobile hit a fixed object at a speed of forty miles an hour, would that be consistent with the injuries sustained?
Dr. Benz: Yes, sir.
Dr. Benz: The findings within the brain were consistent that trauma had occurred a day- or so prior to death.
Attorney: . . , is not your finding also consistent that the trauma that resulted in the formation of the subdued hemotoma could have happened during one of the falls?
Dr. Benz: I would say it’s possible but not probable, (emphasis supplied)
Thus, Dr. Benz testified that the decedent’s death by a traumatic blow to the head was “consistent with” the automobile accident, and that death was “possible but not very probable” from a fall. This adds up to me as the statement of a reasonable medical certainty of fatal injury caused by the automobile accident. A mere statement of a possibility is not evidence.
As Justice Pivarnik concluded in Palace Bar, Inc. v. Fearnot (1978), Ind., 381 N.E.2d 858, 864: “A doctor’s testimony can only be considered evidence when he states that the conclusion he gives is based on reasonable medical certainty that a fact is true or untrue. A doctor’s testimony that a certain thing is possible is no evidence at all.”
Thus, I would conclude that there was sufficient evidence, including causation, to affirm the conviction.