On Jan. 7, after he'd found Thomas Condon inside a cooler at the Hamilton County Morgue taking pictures of a body, a morgue attendant quizzed the Mount Auburn photographer and pathologist Dr. Jonathan Tobias.

        “Do you have permission to take pictures like that?” Tyrone Smith said Friday, recalling what he'd asked the two men.

        One of 11 prosecution witnesses to take the stand so far in the trial of Mr. Condon and Dr. Tobias in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, Mr. Smith testified that neither man answered him. They both looked confused, he said.

Condon

Tobias

        “Then I said I was just playing,” Mr. Smith continued, adding that he didn't press for an answer because he didn't want Dr. Tobias to report him for asking something that wasn't his business.

        Dr. Tobias, 31, and Mr. Condon, 29, each face a dozen felony charges of gross abuse of a corpse. Other charges of breaking and entering, theft in office and misdemeanor counts of abuse of a corpse have been dismissed.

        Prosecutors say Mr. Condon did not have permission to take hundreds of photographs of 14 bodies inside the morgue between August 2000 and January. Workers at a film-processing company called police after they saw Mr. Condon's negatives.

        Dr. Tobias is accused of helping Mr. Condon gain access to the bodies. Defense attorneys say Mr. Condon did have permission.

        “We don't question anything down there,” said Clyde Gamble, another morgue attendant who testified Friday. “A morgue attendant's job is to assist the pathologist” in performing autopsies.

        Both Mr. Gamble and Mr. Smith said they thought Mr. Condon had permission to enter the morgue and photograph bodies.

        They testified that they had not been told that Dr. Parrott had canceled plans to update a proposed video project, the reason Mr. Condon was allowed inside the morgue in the first place.

        Chief Deputy Coroner Robert Pfalzgraf also testified Friday that he thought Mr. Condon had permission to take photographs.

        Another prosecution witness, Terry Daly, an administrative aide with the coroner's office, said Friday that he told Mr. Condon in October 2000 that plans for a video had been scrapped.

        “He did not ask about being allowed to come in the morgue again,” Mr. Daly said.

        The trial will resume Tuesday before Common Pleas Judge Norbert Nadel.

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