…fueled by his anger with his predecessor, Pope Formosus, Stephen exhumed Formosus's rotting corpse and put "him" on trial, in the so-called "Cadaver Synod" in January, 897. With the corpse propped up on a throne, a deacon was appointed to answer for the deceased pontiff. The corpse was found guilty, stripped of its sacred vestments, deprived of three fingers of its right hand (the blessing fingers), clad in the garb of a layman, and quickly buried; it was then re-exhumed and thrown in the Tiber. All ordinations performed by Formosus were annulled. The scandal ended in Stephen's imprisonment and his death by strangling that summer. Some question the validity of his papacy, like his predecessor Pope Leo VI, he was elected while Pope John X was still alive and in prison.