Finally, moved by the incessant pleadings of Mr. Hepburn, the junior
counsel, by the urgings of the public press, led by the Philadelphia
_Evening Bulletin_, and by the protests of numerous scientific bodies,
the legislature passed a special act granting Dr. Schoeppe a new
trial. On this occasion the judge allowed the weakness of the expert
testimony for the prosecution to be demonstrated, and chiefly as a
result of this demonstration--of what has been called the "coarse
brutality" of showing Dr. Conrad's ignorance--Dr. Schoeppe was
acquitted.
If the principles contended for in this article had been acknowledged,
the processes and results in the case of Dr. Schoeppe would have been
far different. In the first place, the post mortem would have been
entrusted to some one qualified to make it--an expert in legal
medicine--and very probably a natural cause for the death of Miss
Stennecke would have been found. Such post mortem not having been
made, the case, after Professor Aiken's analysis, would have been
dropped, because it was impossible that prussic acid could have caused
the death. Had, however, capable experts failed to detect a natural
cause of death, a very serious case might have been made out against
Dr. Schoeppe, even though the analyst had not found morphia in the
stomach.
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