D.C. Stephenson Trial: 1925

Testimony in two areas established the prosecution's case. One was Madge's sworn declaration, made in the presence of four witnesses (two of them lawyers) when her doctor had told her that she could not expect to recover. The other was testimony by three pathologists that Madge had died from a secondary staphylococci infection, resulting from Stephenson's biting assault on her breast, that imposed itself on an acute nephritis, or kidney infection, caused by the poison. Cross-examination by the defense lawyers failed to shake the pathologists.

The defense itself tried to prove that Madge's infection was the residue of an attack of flu some months earlier, that she and Stephenson had been intimate and the trip with him was voluntary, and that Madge's dying statement was "a dying declaration of suicide and not of homicide, made for the justification of herself, to free herself from fault and place the blame on others."