Diagnostic Potentials of Postmortem Vitreous Biochemical Parameters in the Autopsy of Deaths Associated with Sniper Toxicity using Animal Models

Abstract

Literature surveys revealed two major means by which perpetrators of murder crimes survive judicial scrutiny. One is by disguising the cause of death, which ultimately misleads the jury during judicial trials. The other is the fact that blood, the principal specimen for most medical investigations, putrefies shortly after death. This has created a diagnostic gap that is being exploited to mask homicide as the court finds it difficult to accurately ascertain the cause of death where there are no physical injuries, as in cases of chemical toxicities. This study aims at exploring the discriminatory potentials of selected vitreous biochemical parameters in the autopsy of death by sniper toxicity and in death disguised as sniper toxicity using rabbits. Completely randomized block design (CRBD) was used for this study. 96 male rabbits were used for this research and were structured into four groups of twenty-four rabbits each: two treatment (test) groups and two control groups. In one test group, the death of the experimental subjects was caused by sniper toxicity. In the second test group, the death of the experimental subjects was caused by strangulation; thereafter, the dead subjects were administered lethal doses of sniper as a cover-up of the actual cause of death. The remaining two groups are the baseline controls. After a postmortem interval of twenty-four hours, vitreous samples were obtained from each group of the experimental animals by Coe and Tente’s methods. The samples were analyzed for the levels of sodium, potassium, carbon dioxide, chloride, and calcium using the ion-selective electrode method, while total protein, albumin, globulin, glucose, total cholesterol, triacylglycerol, urea, creatinine, uric acid, creatine kinase, and lactate dehydrogenase were analyzed using their specific standard methods. Results obtained were then analyzed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (Version 18-21) and One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) (Post Hoc-LSD). The results show that postmortem vitreous levels of urea, creatinine, uric acid, creatine kinase, and lactate dehydrogenase differed significantly (P ≤ 0.05) between samples from deaths caused by sniper toxicity and deaths by strangulation but disguised as sniper toxicity. The striking differences in the levels of these notable analytes can be utilized either as primary or confirmatory tests to reveal and discriminate between death disguised as sniper toxicity and death by actual sniper toxicity.