Originally Posted by
Tinstaafl
A37575, I would suggest that failing to confirm (but not necessarily by retarding the throttle) after deciding dead leg = dead engine, is not a good practice.
In fact, I think the weight of historical evidence of pilots shutting down the wrong engine would illustrate the importance of a secondary check to confirm the dead engine.
And the critical part of "retarding" the throttle is not to remove power from that engine as much as seeing if it is responsive, which in no way requires retarding it to idle.