Nicholas Dill died of a lethal cocaine and ecstasy overdose and did not bleed to death, a leading American forensic pathologist told a stunned Supreme Court murder trial yesterday.

Michael Baden, chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police told the six-woman, six-man jury that Mr. Dill died on December 26, 2004 because of the amount of illegal drugs in his system and not from knife wounds. Dr. Baden was testifying in the murder trial of Andre Kirk Hypolite and contradicted the Crown?s expert, Miami/Dade County forensic pathologist Valerie Rao and challenged the competency of an un-named King Edward VII Memorial Hospital emergency doctor who treated Mr. Dill.

The ?star? of HBO?s Autopsy series told the court: ?Nicholas Dill died as a result of an overdose of cocaine and ecstasy, period.

?The stabbing made it worse but the amount of drug present in my opinion would be in and of itself sufficient to cause death and cause him to get into the confrontation in which he was injured.?

Dr. Baden, who reviewed the medical evidence in the assassination of US president John F. Kennedy and ballistic evidence for slain civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, later said: ?I came down because I thought there could be a serious miscarriage of justice here.?

Hypolite, 35, denies murdering Mr. Dill and wounding Stacey Pike with intent to cause her grievous bodily harm. As her cross-examination reached a climax late yesterday, Senior Crown Counsel Paula Tyndale launched into Dr. Baden and forced him to admit that he did expect to be paid for his testimony for a yet undecided amount. ?I expect to be paid but I?m not sure how much because that still has to be negotiated,? he said.

Dr. Baden has testified for either the prosecution or defence in dozens of high-profile cases including comedian John Belushi, the right-to-die case of Terri Schindler Schiavo and the recent death of 14-year-old Florida teen Martin Lee Anderson in a boot camp.

Dr. Baden never saw Mr. Dill?s body nor did he view the crime scene. During reexamination, defence lawyer Mark Pettingill countered that Dr. Rao was paid to give evidence as well.

Last week, Dr. Rao ? no stranger to Bermuda courts ? told the court Mr. Dill died as a result of exsanguination ? meaning he bled to death after receiving multiple stab wounds.

Yesterday Dr. Baden ? who testified for the Crown in the Rebecca Middleton trial ? said a blood test taken at Mr. Dill?s admission to KEMH showed a ?pretty normal? ratio of 36 percent platelets to fluid in his blood, with 40 percent being normal. ?A fall from 40 to 36 would hardly be noticed,? he explained. ?It goes down more than that when you give blood at the blood bank. There was more blood at the Middleton scene than at this scene.?

However, when Dr. Rao performed her autopsy she did not know the outcome of this blood test, he said. And normally, a person would die after losing between 2,000 to 3,000 cc?s of blood ?very quickly?, Dr. Baden said, whereas Mr. Dill only lost about 500 cc?s of blood.

In addition, Dr. Baden said a small tear on Mr. Dill?s spleen was on the inside, not the outside of this organ.

?This could not have been injured by the knife tract which was a foot lower down, about ten inches below the spleen,? Dr. Baden said. ?In my opinion this is typical for a superficial tear in the capsule, or outside, of the spleen that occurs during surgery when the protractor blades that separates tissues are pulled apart to see what is going on with too much force.

?It was caused by the doctor,? Dr. Baden said. ?He did not come in with a spleen injury.?

The un-named KEMH surgeon who treated Mr. Dill also changed his story about how much loose blood was found in Mr. Dill?s abdomen.

As proof, Dr. Baden cited a report dated December 28, 2004, which said there was ?no bleeding internally?, however, in another report by the same doctor, dated April 5, 2006, claimed there was ?massive internal bleeding?.

Dr. Baden also said it was his ?very strong opinion? the surgeon made a ?clear mistake? about Mr. Dill being in a state of rigor mortis during an operation. ?Rigor mortis is the stiffening of muscles and occurs after death,? he said. ?You can?t notice it for two hours. ?Only after the person is dead.

?Now when Mr. Dill came in at 9.40 a.m. he still had blood pressure and a pulse and was assumed to be alive, unless they operate on dead bodies. That?s a clear mistake! That?s my very strong opinion,? Dr. Baden concluded.

Instead, the reason Mr. Dill was in a coma on arrival at KEMH was due to the ?huge amount of cocaine and ecstasy? in his body at the time he ?collapsed? at his residence about 8.30 a.m. on Boxing Day, 2004.

Dr. Rao discovered 0.81 micrograms of cocaine per millilitre of blood in the of December 29, Dr. Baden said, a level much higher than the amount needed to kill other people.

Dr. Baden added this level would have been much higher on Boxing Day and that the ecstasy found in his system would have made his situation worse.

He added: ?I think unfortunately the ecstasy, which was also found in a high amount, added on to the cocaine and had the unfortunate result that when he came to the hospital unconscious and with low blood pressure due to drugs this was misinterpreted.?

?They thought it came from the cut wounds and instead of treating him for a drug overdose treated him for bleeding and if they gave him drugs necessary for a cocaine and ecstasy overdose there might have been a different outcome.?

Dr. Baden admitted that the position of Mr. Dill?s interior organs would change if he was doubled over when he received the injury. He also admitted he saw no damage to Mr. Dill?s liver, lungs, heart, or brain, there was no way to predict who could die from what level of cocaine.

Nor could one predict the level at which the human body could burn cocaine differed from person to person and ecstasy did not usually precede death, Dr. Baden admitted.

He agreed with Ms Tyndale that ecstasy caused agitation and hallucinations, and gestured ? with her head ? toward Hypolite when suggesting that it would not normally be a ?highly dangerous and lethal combination? if a man took one ecstasy pill and his ?usual amount of cocaine?.

Dr. Rao was not wrong to say Mr. Dill was cut in an artery in his hand, he said, and he admitted he he did not see the amount of blood lost in an ambulance or on ?saturated? towels.

He also clarified that while the laboratory at KEMH did not make mistakes and errors, he questioned a ?specific surgeon?, adding: ?I came down because I thought there could be a serious miscarriage of justice here.?

The trial continues before Puisne Justice Carlisle Greaves.