STORY: "Defense witness lays out possible factors in Baby Rosalee’s death," by Laurel Leader-Call Editor Mark Thornton, on June 16, 2023.
GIST: "An improperly-placed intubation tube and a seizure caused by blood that was already on the brain could have been contributing factors in the cause of 6-month-old Rosalee Stringer’s death, a pediatrician from Minnesota testified on Thursday.
Dr. Peter Dehnel — who makes $250 per hour to review records and testify — was the final witness in the capital murder trial of Brandon Gardner and Brooke Stringer. He pointed out the sound of crying in audio from the ER at South Central Regional Medical Center.
“It’s physically impossible” for an infant to cry if she’s “intubated properly,” Dehnel said.
“That’s no criticism of anyone,” he added, noting that it’s “very difficult” to intubate a 6-month-old baby. “It happens.”
But on cross-examination, prosecutor Katie Sumrall got Dehnel to listen to the audio again.
A woman presumably working on Rosalee in the ER is heard saying, “I need a stylet.” That’s part of the tube, so Sumrall asked if that suggests it was being positioned at the time.
“I don’t know if I would come to that conclusion,” Dehnel said.
Sumrall also took issue with Dehnel’s contention that the time stamp on the medical record was indicative of when the procedure took place — something he suggested to show a prolonged lack of oxygen to the brain.
“Do you usually type on the computer during a procedure?” she asked. “Do you stop and type at the same moment?”
Dehnel said, “It depends on who is recording the information.”
Sumrall then asked, “Does the tube have anything to do with why 911 was called?”
He said, “No.”
Dehnel did, however, offer a theory about how Rosalee could have bumped her head on the bedside nightstand from floor level and wound up with a fatal head injury. Early bumps — possibly on the day before at daycare — could have caused her to have a small amount of blood on the brain and that could have caused a seizure.
The combination of that and a prolonged lack of oxygen to the brain could have led to the results that were shown on the autopsy, he said.
When Sumrall pointed to the brain and retinal hemorrhaging, he didn’t change his opinion.
He noted records from SCRMC that labeled it as NAT — Non-Accidental Trauma — in records that were sent with Rosalee when she was airlifted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
“Once they start going down that path of diagnosis, it’s hard for other physicians to consider other diagnoses,” he said under questioning by Gardner’s attorney Marcus Evans.
“I suggest it was a seizure .... but it could be 10 or 12 other things,” he said.
Then-medical examiner Dr. David Arboe ruled that the cause of death was blunt-force trauma and the manner of death was homicide.
UMMC forensic pediatrician Dr. Scott Benton determined that it was abusive head trauma.
Dehnel looked at the history of the child and co-defendants and noted “no signs or indicators” of abuse from them but the only injury noted on Rosalee’s record was from the daycare on Oct. 2.
There was speculation that she may have suffered another bruise at daycare the morning before she was rushed to the hospital, but there was no record or evidence of that.
Several of Dehnel’s findings that were deemed speculative or erroneous were stricken from his report — it was amended again that morning in some last-minute legal wrangling out of view of the jury.
In questioning by Stringer’s attorney Tangi Carter, he said that the symptoms described by Gardner and Stringer — the baby’s body going limp, her eyes rolling back in her head — are “common presenting signs of seizure.”
Sumrall asked him what the primary cause of her brain injury was — including the brain and retinal hemorrhaging.
“In the days leading up to the event, she had a series of bumps, and that led to the bleeding you saw on the autopsy,” Dehnel said.
She would be able to function normally until the blood on the brain caused the seizure and the “improperly installed intubation tube” made it worse.
“What caused the head bump?” Sumrall asked.
Dehnel said, “There’s no clear indicator ... It could be a number of things. A fall backward and hit her head.”
Sumrall questioned the severity of the injury from a non-ambulatory child, and he stuck to his findings.
“So, you can’t tell what the bump was, but you know it wasn’t abuse?” Sumrall asked.
“I don’t have any indicators” that it was caused by the defendants, but “there is evidence” that an injury happened at the daycare, Dehnel concluded.
There was more legal wrangling out of view of the jury, with Judge Dal Williamson asking Dehnel to provide medical literature supporting some of his statements and report findings."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.leader-call.com/news/free_news/defense-witness-lays-out-possible-factors-in-baby-rosalee-s-death/article_0561f348-0c4d-11ee-b894-abdfa3ba5694.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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