English Sentence
I was choked by smoke.
My instinctive Italian translation was “Sono stato soffocato …”. 
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Yes, my first reading of “Ero soffocato” is “I had choked”.
Possibly just the mysteries of passato prossimo v imperfetto…
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Italian to English tense/mood mapping is not always simple.
In this case, I think “I was choking” would be more fitting. “Ero soffocato” has more of a meaning of “I was in the state of being choked”.
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Right. I had to dust up my grammar a bit about this one.
Anyway, this sentence uses what we call “trapassato prossimo”, which should be used when an action in the past is concluded. When the auxiliary verb is “avere”, I think this is the only interpretation possible.
On the other hand, if the auxiliary verb is “essere”, you can interpret the verb+past participle as an “imperfetto”+adjective as well, where the imperfect describes a continuous condition, and this is often the implied meaning.
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