DaytonDailyNews.com

DAYTON — Pancake batter, calf brains and chicken torsos are not good experiment subjects when it comes to duplicating injuries suffered by an infant who died as the result of being placed in a microwave oven, a Louisville, Ky., forensic pathologist said Tuesday.

That was the upshot of the testimony from defense witness George Nichols in the pretrial hearing for the China Arnold case.

Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge John Kessler is presiding over the hearing.

Nichols was rebutting the testimony of prosecution witness Robert F. Schiffman, a consultant from New York who earlier this month told the court he used calf brains and chicken torsos in experiments to duplicate the injuries suffered by Arnold's 3½-week-old daughter, Paris Talley.

Defense attorney Jon Paul Rion is contesting Schiffman's status as an expert witness.

Arnold is charged with aggravated murder and could face the death penalty if convicted as charged. Police investigators believe she killed her daughter by putting her in a microwave in August 2005.

The trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 28.

Nichols, who is a paid consultant to Rion, testified that pancake batter is not a living thing and has a different density than human tissue.

"It's a flat surface ... we are not flat," he said in reference to a report Schiffman wrote regarding his experiments to determine how long the child had been in the microwave.

Nichols also said Schiffman's effort was "not a reliable study."

"We're not just muscle and bone," and "a real chicken doesn't have the right structure (compared to a human)," Nichols told the court.

"None of those studies relates to what happens in a microwave after death."

Kessler has not issued a ruling on the challenge regarding Schiffman's status.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2414 or kwynn@DaytonDailyNews.com.