Medical Examiner Properly Allowed to Testify that Manner of Death was “Homicide”.

State v. Xiong, Minn.S.Ct., 4/24/2013.  A jury convicted Mr. Xiong of first degree premeditated murder for the shooting death of Youa Lor.  Mr. Xiong told police that he had pointed a gun near Mr. Lor’s abdomen and when he “looked up, it went off.”  He also told the officers that he hadn’t wanted to point the gun and hadn’t wanted to shoot Mr. Lor. 

Without objection, the medical examiner was allowed to state that the manner of death was homicide.  A firearms expert testified, again without objection, about the workings of the weapon and about some testing he performed.  He said that he tried to get the weapon to discharge without pulling the trigger but he couldn’t get it to do that.  And, he testified that the gun’s “trigger pull” was lower than the standard trigger pull of this kind of gun.  He concluded that the gun could only have been fired by pulling the trigger.

First, Mr. Xiong’s objection about the medical examiner’s statement that the manner of death was homicide.  Mr. Xiong argued that the medical examiner’s statement inferred Mr. Xiong’s intent but the doctor lacked sufficient information to conclude that.  Justice Wright parries this argument with some dictionary – with some help from Justice Stras?  - gymnastics that are too clever by half.

“Homicide” – the killing of one person by another –  she says, does include “murder” but “murder” can be intentional or unintentional; and, she says, can be justified or unjustified.  Fatal to Mr. Xiong’s argument, no one asked the good doctor what he meant by the word, “homicide” so its use “did not imply that a crime had [even] occurred.  That being the case, then there was no inference whatsoever about Mr. Xiong’s intent.  So, under this construct, all that the medical examiner said was that one person killed another.  The court spays the word of its popular meaning – did no one on the court ever watch “Homicide – Life on the Streets;” were Pembleton and Bayliss really just running around investigating car accident fatalities? – and leaves it this, totally lame eunuch of a word.  It’s a word, however that somehow remains “helpful” to the jury in deciding whether the “killing of one person by another” in this case had been intentional and premeditated.  The doctor’s statement was thus not error, plain or otherwise.

On the firearms expert the court says that his conclusions were based on the tests he conducted and the analysis he performed.  It was helpful to the jury to address Mr. Xiong’s misfire defense.  It properly addressed two factual issues:  whether Mr. Xiong had discharged the gun accidently’ and whether the gun could have fired because of jarring or a blow to the gun.  Again, there was no error in admitting this testimony, plain or otherwise.