Legal Question in Criminal Law in Arizona

FORENSIC EVIDENCE

I'm not licensed in Arizona, but in Tennessee, so it is possible my response will not consider certain peculiarities of Arizona law, but generally speaking if the suspect was under arrest for the murder, he needed to have been advised of the autopsy so he could have had his own tests performed, and if the autopsy was conducted without informing him, then the state might have a problem getting the evidence from the autopsy in.But if the autopsy was performed BEFORE any arrest, then they would be able to use anything they found.

Where is the corpse when you need it

I speak from California law but feel that the results will be the same since the U.S. Supreme Court has preempted this field. Unless the accused can show that evidence was destroyed in "bad faith" by the prosecution in order to hurt the defendant's case, any irregularities will simply go the the weight of the evidence and not to its admissibility. As a practical matter, by videotaping the autopsy, the authorities have demonstrated a lack of desire to hurt the defendant's case. When the accused brings in a forensic pathologist, that expert will be able to critique the work of the state pathologist using the video. Often, an accused does not secure the services of his own experts until much later in his case anyway. A really good forensic pathologist, the best in the world being Werner Spitz M.D. of Detroit, can make mincemeat out of the average prosecutor using nothing more than the autopsy photographs.