1. An examination of a dead body to determine the cause of death, esp. in a criminal in-vestigation.
— Also termed postmortem; necropsy. [Cases: Coroners 14. C.J.S. Coroners and Medical Examiners § 16.]
2. The evidence of one’s own senses.
“To a rational man of perfect organization, … the best and highest proof of which any fact is susceptible is the evidence of his own senses. Hence autopsy, or the evidence of one’s own senses, furnishes the strongest probability and indeed the only perfect and indubitable certainty of the existence of any sensible fact.” Gentry v. McMinnis, 3 Dana 382 (1835)(as quoted in John H. Wigmore, A Students’ Textbook of the Law of Evidence 214 (1935)).
