Colorado’s second-highest court ruled last week that an “undetermined” cause of death by a county coroner does not prevent prosecutors from presenting their own evidence that the death was in fact a homicide.

In the case before the Court of Appeals, Denver jurors convicted Robert W. Feldman in 2022 of murdering his wife, Stacy Feldman. He is serving a life sentence.

According to the evidence, Robert Feldman found Stacy Feldman unconscious in the bathtub with the shower running and tried unsuccessfully to revive her before first responders arrived. Two medical examiners from the Denver medical examiner’s office, in consultation with the chief medical examiner, ultimately certified the cause and manner of death as “undetermined.”

After discovering that Robert Feldman may have had a motive to kill his wife because he just found out she was having an affair, law enforcement consulted with an expert. Although not a medical examiner, the doctor had autopsy experience and strangulation expertise. He testified that he believed Stacy Feldman died “from a combination of strangulation and suffocation.”

On appeal, Feldman argued that the constitution and state laws give coroners “sole discretion” to determine the cause and manner of a person’s death. Therefore, the Denver medical examiner could not “delegate” this authority to the DA’s office for its own expert to make such a determination.

“Is it your argument,” Judge Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov asked during arguments to a three-judge appeals panel, “that once the medical examiner made that decision, no expert on behalf of a prosecutor could contradict that at a later date, based on that expert’s subsequent review of the evidence?”

That’s fair, defense attorney Jeffrey S. Pagliuca replied, but “I’ll go further than that.”

“You can’t bring a criminal prosecution for murder where there is no cause of death by the medical examiner,” he said. “Under Colorado law, that has to be decided by the coroner’s office.”

“Is it correct, then, that the implication of what you’re saying is that when a medical examiner determines the cause of death to be undetermined, no one can ever be prosecuted?” Judge Daniel M. Taubman pressed.

Not unless the law enforcement officers can provide new facts or evidence that would convince the coroner to change his mind, answered Pagliuca.

The Court of Appeal panel rejected the invitation to recognize a broad authority for coroners to block criminal charges. It noted that Feldman’s theory — that an executive agency cannot delegate a function to another agency — has not been supported by Colorado courts. Furthermore, the Denver medical examiner’s office did not delegate to anyone the responsibility of determining the cause and manner of death.

“The coroner and forensic pathologist performed their duties of performing a forensic autopsy, determining the cause and manner of death, and issuing a death certificate,” wrote Taubman, a retired judge who served on the panel of judgment at the mission of the chief judge. in the opinion of November 7.

“The fulfillment of these duties in no way prevented the prosecution from presenting other evidence regarding the cause and manner of the victim’s death in a subsequent criminal trial, even if it was in contradiction with the coroner’s ruling,” he continued.

The case is People v. Feldman.