were already on her desk.
She wanted to take care of this and get her Floridian license ASAP, even if she would not end up down there but still in the Northeast. Her friends had told her that she had approximately six months before she would have to appear in court to argue and defend her Motion. And if she ever had to appear in court for that, the judge in all likelihood would not be one as understanding as Kenneth Good…
For her quick trip South, flying, she took just two days off from her office and she was back at work on the third. Besides continuing to see patients, within two weeks of the new, already-delayed-once court day, she would have to come up with some other reasonable, believable excuse to delay it again hopefully for perhaps sixty more days. She probably would be allowed that second delay, but beyond that, as per her friends, the assigned judge to her Motion would not let her delay it again a third time…
6
The Case Of Dr. Anthony Lennox
Around the time when Judge Good had given his advice with judicial sense and experience to Dr. Nora Phillips to extricate herself from the State Health Department -by moving out of state before the axe fell on her neck- he, himself, began to handle another tricky case potentially contentious for his own position. It was spring.
His judicial duties were commonly tangled with medical professionals as were the many issues brought to his attention by his wife, a physician, and by his friend Dr. Phillips:
Judge Good’s new case indeed had to do also with medical issues: It was the case of another doctor, a family practitioner in his area, Dr. Anthony Lennox, already charged by a Grand Jury with 2nd degree murder for the death of his infant daughter, a 3 month old infant. Apparently the local D.A. who was taking care of the prosecution himself, had plenty of evidence, very graphic, colorful, bloody and goring photos of the dead child’s brain at autopsy and plenty of other doctors’ opinions, pediatricians from Buffarin General ER, all pointing to the poor Dr. Lennox as ‘a murderer.’
The injuries to the child’s head, with a large bleeding, an acute subdural hematoma on the surface of the brain under the skull and meninges, meant that someone, had hit her head in the middle of the night using a large force or throwing her against a hard object like the sink or the tub. The explanations Dr. Lennox, her father, gave to the hospital doctors did not add up; there was no way that the child having ‘slipped off his hands’ when he was cleaning her diarrhea in the middle of the night, could have caused the massive bleeding and brain herniation that killed her so fast.
“She would have had to be dropped from a 3rd story window to suffer such an injury to her brain,” the pediatrician-expert-in-child-abuse said. “He is lying!”
The grand jury had been shown the bloody photographs and easily charged him with 2nd degree murder. They couldn’t charge him with ‘First Degree’ as they did not have a motive, and apparently the couple, her parents, were not fighting. But of course in Grand Jury Hearings, only the state prosecutor, the DA, shows the jurors all the evidence he has and the defendant or his attorneys are not present… If there is then no admission of guilt by the defendant, then a trial is scheduled with all the evidence for both sides and witnesses and experts.
In this case, with so much evidence, and the ER doctors and one outside pediatrician, an expert in SBS (‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’), all against Dr. Lennox, plus presumably his lying about what had happened, the charge was nearly irrefutable. In a settled negotiation (that would lead to some imprisonment, plus later to his wife divorcing him) between the prosecutor and the doctor’s lawyer, the issue was resolved without jurors; judge Kenneth Good presided but did not decide. The doctor was firm in his being innocent, but was convinced by his lawyer that accepting a Plea Bargain, the down-graded charge of ‘Guilty of Manslaughter’ (or negligent homicide) instead of ‘Murder,’ was the best possible outcome for him in view of all the evidence and experts the D.A. had. Basically the D.A. handled his ‘conviction.’ The poor fellow Dr. Lennox, frightened, accepted it instead of fighting in court in front of a judge and jury.
The accepted guilty verdict of ‘negligent homicide’ was negotiated not on the ‘severity’ of the somehow inflicted injury to the child’s head (as the ER doctors and the pediatrician had insisted, but still denied by him), but because Dr. Lennox had not taken his daughter to the ER immediately upon the fall he had described. It was decided that ‘the delay’ had killed the girl and he admitted to such delay. He had waited a good 10 hours till she was vomiting at home and his wife had interrupted him ‘while seeing patients in his office like if nothing had happened.’
In the negotiated settlement, at the end, even Dr. Lennox begged the judge to begin his confinement right away to get it over as soon as possible. Thus the doctor was taken immediately to serve his 2 years in the county jail, instead of in a state prison. His lawyer assured him that “eventually you will only do 15 months or so, perhaps even less.” He did not tell him that after that he would have in all likelihood several years of probation as a convicted felon for child abuse… and that he ‘might’ lose his license…
But his troubles with the system would not end there. Yes, the State Health Department (OPC) would for sure step in immediately upon the accepted guilt of homicide, (even if just on ‘negligence’ basis) to remove his medical license also for some years-‘plus.’ And additionally, upon his release, he would also be given a probational limited license, very humiliating, to practice only as a helper in some clinic, sort of as a med student, under strict supervision! At least his case was for now legally over – both for the poor doctor and for judge Good.
Or was it?…
Judge Kenneth Good, the weekend that followed the ‘accepted’ verdict without a trial -that for sure would have been pumped up by the Media- had in his backyard a friendly gathering for a picnic of several of his professional friends, mostly doctors; his wife had prepared for them abundant food and drinks. Among other guests and family, those included Dr. Nora Phillips the neurologist, herself also in legal trouble with the Health Department, Dr. Roger Newman, a neurosurgeon, and a French-Canadian child neurologist from across the border Dr. François Elan; he had been judge Good’s acquaintance through his court for a few years and was an odd, published but hardly read guy, controversial but with solid basic principles; he often clashed with the US medico-legal establishment but easily got away with it as he practiced in Toronto; well known in the legal system he was often called as an expert on both sides of the border.
Right after his court’s half-liked, half-hated negotiated, easy verdict, Judge Good, through his law clerk, and his wife Barbara, made copies of the court file, the ER and pathology reports-plus photos, and of course Dr. Lennox’s statement and explanations, all now available to his guests. He did not think that disclosing them now broke any HIPAA laws or constituted inappropriate revelations of court material since the case was in essence over for him and for the accused and convicted doctor. The friendly doctors in the picnic had already browsed through all that material in the Goods’ living room, each having been given plenty of time before the actual gathering by the pool side, outdoors. Some had also seen the headlines and reports issued by the press and television, all with an obvious indicting tone against the doctor.
So by the time those guests and judge Good began their exchange all had a good idea of the case. As the judge, for the most part, all believed that the condemned doctor had told the truth, that he had not thrown his daughter against the wall and, furthermore, that he was actually innocent. They felt bad for him: Just the victim of an unfortunate accident where the circumstances had piled against him.
A leading voice in their exchange was that of Dr. Elan, the guy from across the border:
“I believe his daughter did have some sort of a gastrointestinal bug with diarrhea, and that Dr. Lennox was actually nice to have volunteered in the middle of the night to clean her as she cried, letting his wife remain in bed as HE was busy with her mess in the bathroom.”
“And” said Barbara Good “I don’t think that the pathologist who did the autopsy even addressed that issue of the kid’s illness, amid so much in her skull. The pathologist looked just at ‘all that trauma,’