Day 3, morning
To hear the prosecution in Cammie Kelly’s trial tell it, Kaiden Gullidge’s medical history is totally irrelevant to why the 11-month-old died in January 2011. For the defense, Kaiden’s conditions are the only factor worth considering.
Kelly was charged with aggravated battery and first degree murder after Gullidge went unconscious and stopped breathing while in her care on Jan. 18, 2011. According to Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Milhiser, Kelly shook the child enough to cause bleeding and swelling of the brain and bleeding of the retinas. Kelly’s attorney, John Rogers of Springfield, says Kaiden’s medical problems are to blame.
The case tests the theory of “shaken baby syndrome,” a controversial idea commonly used to explain certain child deaths. However, the science behind the theory is uncertain, meaning courtrooms around the nation are deciding the issue with conflicting testimony from medical experts.
Dr. Gregory Bennett, a pediatrician at St. John’s Pavilion in Springfield, took the witness stand Thursday morning to testify as Kaiden’s doctor. Bennett detailed a handful of Kaiden’s visits to his office, recounting that the child’s growth and development seemed normal, especially considering Kaiden was born six weeks premature.
Under questioning by Milhiser, Bennett said he had no concerns about the child, other than intermittent ear infections and respiratory problems, which Bennett characterized as common. If Kaiden was perfectly healthy in Bennett’s eyes, according to the prosecution’s theory, then Kelly must be responsible for Kaiden’s death.
However, Rogers questioned Bennett about Kaiden’s head circumference, a measure that can indicate health problems in children if outside the normal range. Rogers’ theory is that Kaiden had a stroke, based in part on evidence about the child’s head circumference.
Although Kaiden’s head circumference started out well below the normal range shortly after birth, his head began to grow quickly, reaching the 80th percentile by his nine-month checkup. That visit in November 2010 was the last time Bennett saw Kaiden.
The morning before Kaiden went unconscious at Kelly’s home day care, however, a nutritionist measured Kaiden’s head as part of a routine checkup for Sangamon County Department of Public Health.
In the courtroom, Rogers instructed Bennett to plot each of Kaiden’s head circumference marks on the chart showing the normal range. Based on the chart, Bennett testified, Kaiden’s head was in the 90th percentile. Asked by Rogers whether he would have been concerned and ordered tests if he had known that, Bennett said yes.
Milhiser questioned Bennett again, asking whether a child with a large head is more susceptible to head injuries. Bennett said yes.
“Such as shaking?” Milhiser asked.
Before Bennett could answer, Rogers objected, and Sangamon County Presiding Judge John Belz called a private sidebar conversation between himself, the prosecution and the defense. When they returned, Belz sustained Rogers’ objection.
The two sides went back and forth for several more minutes, asking Bennett to plot Kaiden’s height and weight growth. Eventually, Rogers asked Bennett to plot Kaiden’s head circumference on the chart for his Jan. 18 check-up. Rogers put the chart on an overhead projector and circled the point in red ink.
The point was in the 98th percentile, bolstering Rogers’ claim that Kaiden’s head grew so quickly that he must have had a brain problem that doctors missed.
Day 3, afternoonThe focus on Kaiden’s medical history continued in the afternoon as a controversial figure took the witness stand.
Dr. Channing Petrak, medical director at the Pediatric Resource Center in Peoria, testified today on behalf of the prosecution about examining Kaiden Gullidge and arriving at the conclusion that he was abused. While on the stand, Petrak faced a withering barrage of questions from the defense, which attempted to impeach not only her medical judgment but also her impartiality as an expert.
Petrak’s organization, which is part of the University of Illinois College of Medicine, evaluates children who may have been physically or sexually abused. Accordingly, she has testified in several cases dealing with “shaken baby syndrome.”
Before Petrak began her testimony, Rogers, the defense attorney, ried to keep Petrak from being admitted as an expert witness in the trial at all, noting that she failed the board certification exam for child abuse pediatrics on her first try and was not board certified in that specialty when she first became involved in Kaiden’s case. Petrak said she was first certified for general pediatrics in 2003 but didn’t get certified in child abuse pediatrics until 2013. Belz, the judge, allowed Petrak to serve as an expert witness despite Rogers’ objection.
Under questioning from assistant state’s attorney Jeff Cox, Petrak told the court that she examined Kaiden on January 19 and reviewed the medical records available to her at the time to determine that Kaiden must have been a victim of abuse by shaking.
Cox showed the jury, composed of eight women and four men, photos of Kaiden which depict bruising on the back of his head, his temple, inside his ear and on his arm and chest. The bruises themselves were the subject of a contentious back-and-forth on Wednesday because they didn’t appear until after several doctors had examined Kaiden. Petrak told the court that the bruises – especially the one inside the ear – and the lack of any obvious cause for his condition led her to suspect abuse.
It was at Petrak’s direction that two Springfield police detectives questioned Kelly for two hours on Jan. 20, attempting to get a confession of abuse from Kelly. On cross-examination, Rogers asked Petrak whether she reviewed Kaiden’s pediatric medical records – which Rogers believes show a predisposition toward childhood stroke – before suggesting to the detectives that Kaiden had been abused. Petrak said she had not, but that once she did review the records, her conclusion was the same.
Rogers asked Petrak how many times she had initially deemed a case to be child abuse only to change her mind after reviewing all of the records.
“I don’t recall saying it was abusive head trauma and later changing it,” Petrak replied.
Rogers also attempted to undermine Petrak’s objectivity. He pointed out several presentations Petrak has given dealing with child abuse in court cases, which Rogers characterized as proof Petrak sees every case as child abuse. He implied that her organization’s grant funding was dependent upon labeling cases as child abuse. He asked how many times Petrak had testified for defense attorneys to say a case was not child abuse; Petrak responded that she had not done so.
Also testifying Thursday afternoon was Dr. Julian Lin, a pediatric neurosurgeon at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria. Lin reviewed Kaiden’s CT scan and MRI results while Kaiden was being transferred from St. John’s Hospital in Springfield to OSF, and he later reviewed repeated tests done in Peoria. Referring to test results projected on a screen for the jury, Lin pointed out evidence of swelling and bleeding in Kaiden’s brain. He said that about 75 percent of the child’s brain lacked blood flow when the tests were run in Springfield. By the time Kaiden arrived in Peoria, he had what neurosurgeons refer to as “big black brain,” a term describing a black test result that indicates a complete lack of blood flow. “The whole brain is lost,” Lin said. “It’s not viable.” Lin told the prosecution that he suspected abuse because “blood outside the brain is trauma unless proven otherwise,” adding that he saw no evidence of a stroke. However, under questioning by Rogers, Lin said he also saw no evidence of impact in the scans and couldn’t cut into a subject’s brain to verify whether a stroke had occurred the way a pathologist might.Many of Rogers’ questions to the prosecution’s medical experts were in that vein – getting doctors to admit that they would defer to other specialists to interpret test results or that two competent doctors could disagree on a diagnosis. Those questions foreshadow the testimony scheduled for tomorrow, when the pathologist who examined Kaiden to determine his cause of death is set to testify.
Contact Patrick Yeagle at pyeagle@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2015.
