Life Sentence Upheld on Appeal For Christopher Duntsch, aka Dr. Death
Neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, the first doctor to be convicted for aggravated assault related to the care provided in his operating room, lost his appeal this week. His conviction was affirmed by Justices Douglas Lang and Robert Filmore in the Fifth District Court of Appeals. Justice David Schenck dissented.
The affirmation means that Duntsch’s life sentence will more than likely stand; he had 15 days after the Monday ruling to appeal further. You probably know him as Dr. Death, a nickname we came up with for our cover story in November of 2016. Wondery then took that moniker and ran with it, producing a popular Podcast earlier this year about Duntsch and his victims under the same name.
Duntsch’s case is a depressing and frustrating one. It’s also salacious. By the time he found himself in court, charged with five counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and one count of injury to an elderly individual, prosecutors had identified nearly three dozen people who had been harmed under his knife. They ranged from Kellie Martin, who bled to death after a relatively common procedure called a laminectomy. He sliced Floella Brown’s vertebral artery, causing massive bleeding and fueling a stroke that later killed her. Others suffered severe nerve damage after Duntsch procedures. Some can barely walk years after their operations.
Duntsch was charged with those six counts, but tried on only one: the charge of injuring an elderly patient. Mary Efurd, then 53, was to have two vertebrae fused, linked by a metal plate. She woke up screaming and in severe pain. Another neurosurgeon who was called in for corrective surgery would testify that the spinal fusion hardware had been left in her muscle. The nerve root had been severed. Her spine was pockmarked with screw holes, and a screw had been lodged in another nerve root near the bottom of her spine.
Read more: https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2018/12/life-sentence-upheld-on-appeal-for-christopher-duntsch-aka-dr-death/
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