STORY: "
Despite medical examiner’s change, DA will still prosecute," by reporter Patricia Wen, published by the Globe on April 12, 2016.
SUB-HEADING; 'Prosecutors maintain that 6-month-old Ridhima Dhekane died in 2014 from injuries suffered at the hands of her day care provider.'
GIST: "For the third time in two years, a state medical examiner has
backed away from a finding that an infant died of “shaken baby
syndrome,’’ but this time prosecutors are refusing to drop homicide
charges, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said Tuesday. The
latest case, likely to intensify questions about the handling of this
type of child abuse prosecution, involves the death of a 6-month-old
girl from Burlington who lapsed into unconsciousness while being cared
for by a home day care operator on March 27, 2014, and later died at
Boston Children’s Hospital. A medical examiner who performed the autopsy, Dr. Anna McDonald,
reviewed the case for a year and declared that the girl, Ridhima
Dhekane, had died of abusive head trauma and excessive shaking, citing
spinal fractures, brain swelling, and retinal damage. The day-care operator, Pallavi Macharla, was charged with murder. But since then, McDonald has gradually adjusted her
determination of the cause of death. In December, she said the child’s
retinal damage
was not caused by traumatic shaking,
but continued to call the death a homicide. Last month, after reviewing
reports from the defense’s experts, McDonald stepped back from a
homicide ruling altogether, saying the child died of cardiac arrest. In a March 22, 2016, letter, McDonald told prosecutors and her former
boss in the medical examiner’s office, Dr. Henry Nields, that she
believed the baby died of “a cardiopulmonary arrest of unknown
etiology.” She said other injuries found in her brain and eyes were
related to aggressive revival efforts by medical staff or other causes
related to poor blood flow. The Globe’s efforts to reach McDonald
on Tuesday were unsuccessful. She left the medical examiner’s office in
August 2014 to join the faculty at Wake Forest School of Medicine in
North Carolina, and her major findings and the revisions in the case all
came after she left. Ryan said her office will continue to press murder charges against
Macharla, 41, who ran an unlicensed day-care center in Burlington, but
she acknowledged that McDonald’s revised opinion could present
complications with the jury. Ryan told the Globe that a key factor
in her decision to move forward is the future testimony of the chief
medical examiner, Nields, who in 2014 supervised McDonald and was
present at the autopsy. Ryan said Nields “remains steadfast in his
opinion that the cause of the baby’s death as stated on the death
certificate should remain unchanged,” prosecutors said in a filing......... This case marks the
third time in the last two years that a shaken-baby prosecution in
Middlesex County has run into complications. In the two other cases,
Ryan’s office ultimately decided not to prosecute when the medical
examiner, after reviewing defense experts’ reports, changed the finding
from homicide to undetermined. One case involved an MIT employee,
Geoffrey Wilson, accused of killing his son, and the other involved an Irish nanny,
Aisling Brady McCarthy, charged with murdering a Cambridge baby girl in her care. Both cases were ultimately dropped by Ryan’s office. J.W.
Carney Jr., an attorney who represents Macharla, who was a medical
doctor in India, issued a press release Tuesday, still holding out hope
that prosecutors will drop the case. “She has been consistent and unwavering in her denials of harming the child in any way,” he wrote. In
his statement to the court, Carney said Macharla was feeding applesauce
to the infant when she “choked and vomited, and then became
unresponsive.” Macharla began CPR and called the infant’s mother.
Carney, who had also represented Wilson, said he later hired Dr.
Elizabeth Laposata, former chief medical examiner of Rhode Island, who
found that cardiac arrest was the cause of death. When McDonald
initially declared the death a homicide, Macharla was indicted and held
without bail. However, in December, when McDonald began revising her
opinion, Macharla was released on $25,000 bail, provided she remained
under house arrest. She was allowed to go out only for court
appointments and lawyer visits. Under a ruling issued Tuesday, Macharla
is no longer under house arrest, but must still wear a GPS monitor. Despite
Ryan’s statements about continuing the prosecution, Carney hopes she
will drop the charges, as she did twice before. “Dr. Macharla prays that
the same result will occur in her case, rather than having to go
through a trial that will be agonizing for her and the victim’s family.”
The entire story can be found at:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/04/12/changes-opinion-baby-death-but-prosecution-will-continue/7eUuWi4b38xDPiMNtnFIFL/story.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses
several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of
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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;