Ex-Neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch Sentenced to Life
Ex-neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch will spend the rest of his life in prison for maiming patients. A jury returned the verdict Monday afternoon, ending a yearslong investigation into dozens of botched surgeries that resulted in two deaths and multiple cases of paralysis.
Duntsch was the focus of D’s November cover story—in a press conference after the verdict, prosecutors proclaimed that the Memphis native was the first physician in the nation to be convicted for behavior inside the operating room. His outcomes were so poor, so beyond the accepted standard of care, that a grand jury indicted him on five counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon as well as a single count of harming an elderly patient. He started practicing at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano and secured privileges at Dallas Medical Center despite having had a patient, Kellie Martin, bleed to death during a surgery. His best friend, Jerry Summers, was left a quadriplegic. At Dallas Medical Center, Floella Brown died of a stroke after an operation and Mary Efurd was severely harmed. He practiced at Legacy Surgical Center in Plano and ended his career at University General Hospital. Prosecutors identified more than 30 patients at the four hospitals who were harmed at his hands in a period of just over 18 months.
During two weeks of testimony in the sentencing portion of the trial, prosecutors zoomed into the 17 years he spent in medical school, residency, and fellowships. They argued that he had to have known that he was likely to hurt the next person he operated on, and he did it anyway. The jury, in returning the guilty verdict after four hours of deliberation, agreed.
A looming print deadline kept me out of the courtroom on Monday for the punishment verdict, but The Dallas Morning News did a good job chronicling the final day of testimony, which included comments from many of his victims:
Read more: http://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2017/02/ex-neurosurgeon-christopher-duntsch-sentenced-to-life/
