Neil Decker died of "a single, shotgun wound to the chest" and "his blood was positive for meth"

Day 4 of the murder trial in which Matthew Brown is charged with murder of Neil Decker continued with testimony from HCSO Sgt. Diana Freese. She had started her testimony on Thursday, February 5, briefly before court adjourned at noon. She resumed her testimony yesterday morning. It was brief again and interrupted because Dr. Mark Super, an out of county forensic pathologist, gave his testimony.

Sgt. Freese had testified about arriving on scene, securing evidence, talking to some witnesses and right before Dr. Super took the stand, DDA Kelly Neel was about to play two interviews where the suspect in Decker's murder Matthew Brown spoke to Sgt. Freese and Detective Sam Williams.

Dr. Super's testified that Decker died of "a single shotgun wound to the chest" and no other injury. The jury saw a photo of Decker's wound which was "on the left chest above the left nipple."

When this photo was shown, Mr. Greg Elvine-Kreiss, who is Brown's attorney turend to Brown in court and asked, "Are you allright?" Brown responded, "yeah"

Dr. Super testified that "the end of the gun at the time the victim was shot was almost straight but slightly upward and to the left."

Toxicology results were done on Decker for controlled substances and "his blood was positive for meth." Dr. Super said measuring how much meth was in the deceased's blood cannot be done accurately. He also said Decker's heart was enlarged.

On cross, Dr. Super said that he could not make any "definitive conclusions about where the shooter or the victim were standing" and when asked by Mr. Elvine-Kreiss if it was possible that the victim could be lunging towards the shooter, Dr. Super said, "it's possible."

Mr. Elvine-Kreiss and Dr. Super went at it about the 1.4 litres of meth found in Decker's blood ad what the levels meant. Mr. Elvine-Kreiss said that was high according to the range on Central Valley Toxicology that did the report, Dr. Super disagreed. He thought this was a medium range. Mr. Elvine-Kreiss tried to question Dr. Super about aggression and meth. Dr. Super deflected Mr. Elvine-Kreiss' questions. He got defensive in his responses. When Mr. Elvine-Kreiss asked him, if he had heard of the DSM and "meth psychosis" and Dr. Super said, "I am not a psychologist."

Mr. Elvine-Kreiss asked him if he was familiar with the DSM and meth psychosis and Dr. Super said, "it exists." Dr. Super then went on to say tolerance had a lot to do with how a person would react and "lot of illegal drugs were initially developed for medicinal use."

To which Mr. Elvine-Kreiss responded, "So you have an opinion but you have no knowledge about effective levels of meth?"

Dr. Super snapped back," By the nature of my practice, my patients are dead so they do not exihibit psychosis."

"In 10,000 autopsies you have conducted, did people die of meth psychosis," asked Mr. Elvine-Kreiss.

"Yes," said Dr. Super. "But I did not make a diagnosis. I do an autopsy so I make a determination whether meth killed them or not, not if they are psychotic."

In previous testimony, Brown's girlfriend at the time of the alleged shooting said that Brown had done meth earlier that day. All witnesses who knew both testified that all of them regularly did meth.