Medical examiner details autopsy of Jasmine Pace in day four of Jason Chen murder trial
Note: Many of the details in this story may be disturbing to some readers.
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF)- Day four the Jason Chen murder trial is underway.
Chen is charged with first degree murder in the November 2022 death of Jasmine Pace.
The primary witness throughout the day on Thursday was Hamilton County Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cogswell.
Dr. Stephen Cogswell handling the pair handcuffs he says he found shackled around Jasmine Pace when she was found dead in a suitcase off of Suck Creek Road.
He discussed some of the observations he found while doing his autopsy on Jasmine Pace.
From the moment he made that grizzly discovery, Dr. Cogswell took Pace’s body to the medical examiner office for an autopsy
Dr. Cogswell recalled, “And so basically just using my hands, I felt along the contents of the bag and knew it wasn’t an animal or something else. It was a human being.”
He shared that one of the first things that immediately struck him was that Pace was handcuffed and shackled.
Dr. Cogswell told the Nashville based jury, “Again, these are not the typical law enforcement handcuffs, they’re simply cheap, steel prototypes.”
He went on to describe that in addition to Pace’s 60 stab wounds, they found the tip of a chef’s knife broke off in her lung.
Dr. Cogswell explained while holding the knife, “You see that it has the general contour of what you’d expect to see from a chef’s knife. I can’t tell exactly how long that blade is as they can vary in all likelihood, but you can see the very tip end of it was broken off, and that was not recovered at autopsy.”
He also stated that he believed Pace did not die immediately after being attacked, but could have remained alive for up to 10 minutes.
Meanwhile outside of the criminal trial, Jasmine Pace’s mother, Catrina Bean, has filed a civil lawsuit against Chen and his parents, Min Yong and Shu Feng Chen.
In the lawsuit, her attorney, Ben McGowan, argues that Chen’s parents knowingly aided him while he was on the run following Pace’s death.
They say this has caused the Pace family undue emotional distress.
In that lawsuit, the Pace family is asking for $17 million dollars in damages.
The prosecution will continue their case on Friday on day 5 of the trial, of which they say they expect to rest their case.
