Death-By-Dog-Suffocation. Who Knows?

Vielleicht. The issue in the case from Dusseldorf, Germany is this: did the family dog suffocate the drunk woman while she was lying passed out on her bathroom floor, or is her husband responsible for her death? He had been convicted in the first trial, but an appeals court ordered the case retried on evidence that the man was too drunk to have had intent.  On retrial, defense counsel argued that labrador mothers sometimes accidentally smother their newborn pups, so death-by-Labrador-suffocation is a reasonable explanation for the death. The prosecution has offered expert testimony by a man from a local Labrador club, who says that the explanation is not plausible. Legal Blog Watch wonders if it might be helpful to check what a doctor might have to say on the subject. Sometimes maybe you need more than one kind of expert to answer the same question.

Here's the story auf Deutsch.