DR CLAUDE SMITH, Sworn In For The State, 29th To Testify

DR. CLAUDE SMITH, sworn for the State.

I am physician and City Bacteriologist and Chemist. These chips (Exhibit E, State) appear to be the specimen which the detectives brought to my office and which I examined. They had considerable dirt on them and some coloring stain. On one of them I found some blood corpuscles. I do not know whether it was human blood. This shirt (Exhibit E for State) appears to be the same shirt brought to my office by detectives which I examined. I examined spots and it showed blood stain. I got no odor from the arm pits that it had been worn. The blood I noticed was smeared a little on the inside in places. It didn't extend out on the outside. The blood on shirt was somewhat on the inside of the garment high up about the waist line which to my mind could not have been produced by turning up the tail.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

I found grit and stain on all of the chips. I couldn't tell the one that I found blood on. I did the work in the ordinary way. The whole surface of the chips was coated with dirt. I couldn't tell whether the blood stain was fresh or old. I have kept blood corpuscles in the laboratory for several years. I found probably three or four or five blood corpuscles in a field. I don't know how much blood was there. A drop or half drop would have caused it, or even less than that. Rigor mortis begins very soon after death. Sometimes starts quicker, but usually starts very soon. I could not say when rigor mortis would end.