State Crime Lab: Judge’s Reasoning in Fetal Homicide Case “Medically Ludicrous”

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Last night Family Council staff member Charisse Dean appeared on KARK News in Little Rock to discuss Circuit Judge Herb Wright’s decision to drop a murder charge in the death of an unborn child earlier this week.

Following the judge’s decision, the Arkansas State Crime Lab, who is responsible for autopsies in homicide investigations, released a statement making three important points:

  1. When a pregnant woman dies from trauma — such a gunshot wound — her unborn baby dies from the trauma as well.
  2. It is “medically ludicrous” to suggest the unborn baby’s death may have been caused by anything else, as Judge Wright has done in this case.
  3. The crime lab’s doctor examined the unborn baby and determined the baby’s death was due to “maternal trauma” — the gunshot that killed the baby’s mother. However, the doctor may not have been given ample opportunity to explain his findings in court.

You can read the State Crime Lab’s full statement below (emphasis added):

“The Arkansas State Medical Examiners Office is charged with the responsibility of determining the cause and manner of death when local authorities request an examination of the body. In most instances, the examination will consist of a full autopsy; in other instances an external examination or a partial autopsy is enough to determine the cause and manner of death within reasonable certainty.

In cases where a pregnant woman dies suddenly and unexpectedly, fetal death occurs within minutes. When the mother has died from trauma, the fetus has died indirectly from trauma as well. In a situation where a pregnant mother has been fatally shot in the head, it is medically ludicrous to suggest that the intrauterine death of her fetus occurred from some other natural cause a short time before her own death. Is such a circumstance theoretically possible? The answer is yes, but with the caveat that the odds of such a circumstance are so incredibly small that they are essentially nonexistent .

When Dr Adam Craig performed the autopsy of Megan Price, he also performed an external examination of the fetus. This showed no evidence that the fetal death occurred prior to the death of the mother. Based on his examinations of the mother and the fetus, as well as his medical analysis, he concluded that the fetal death was due to maternal trauma. This conclusion was made within reasonable medical certainty. In his testimony, it would appear that he did acknowledge that incredibly small chance that the fetal death was not due to maternal trauma, but was not afforded an opportunity to explain how unlikely that would be. In my opinion, the fact that he did not perform an internal examination of the fetus does not significantly weaken the medical rationale for the stated cause of fetal death.

Finally, manner of death is not assigned in cases of fetal death, even when the death was due to violence.”

You can watch KARK’s coverage of this story below or read it here:

Photo Credit: By Rafael Alcarde Palomares (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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Arkansas Judge Abuses Power, Ignores Life of Unborn Child in Murder Case

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, October 19, 2017

On Wednesday Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright acquitted a North Little Rock man of murdering an unborn child. In 2015, Quenton King of North Little Rock allegedly shot his mistress who was eight months pregnant, killing both her and her unborn child. The judge acquitted King of murdering the unborn baby, because, he said, prosecutors failed to demonstrate the child was alive at the time.

Family Council President Jerry Cox released a statement, saying, “This is ludicrous. No one should have to prove a person was alive prior to being murdered. We know from court testimony that the woman was eight months pregnant when she was shot. Children born prematurely at eight months routinely go on to live healthy lives. Arkansas law says a person can be charged with murder for causing the death of an unborn child. Judge Wright’s decision in this case ignores Arkansas’ homicide laws, and it ignores the life of this unborn baby.”

Cox called Judge Wright’s decision abusive. “Murder trials exist in part to provide justice for the victims. Judge Wright’s decision denies justice to one of those victims. It would be one thing if a jury had reviewed the case and determined there was not enough evidence to find the defendant guilty. Rather than letting a jury decide if the child was alive, Judge Wright has made that decision for them even though there was no evidence indicating the baby was dead prior to the shooting. The Arkansas Constitution says a judge can be impeached for gross misconduct. If this is not gross misconduct, I don’t know what is.”

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Photo Credit: By Brian Turner (Flickr: My Trusty Gavel) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Human Dignity, Sexual Morality, and Counter-Cultural Christianity

Worldview,

Recently there have been a series of high-profile allegations and cases of sexual harassment and predation — the latest being Hollywood magnate Harvey Weinstein.

Many have pointed out these are not isolated incidents. Sexual exploitation, harassment, and assault have become far too common.

Amid this dark culture, it’s important to remember the pagan world to which the gospel was first taken nearly 2,000 years ago. Our friends at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview write,

With the exception of a few highborn women, Roman women were often treated worse than Roman cattle. Even upper-class women were little more than possessions and, when it came to sexuality, they were at their husband’s beck and call and could be disposed of at will.

Slave women, which were a full third of Rome’s female population, could expect beatings and rape. The “fortunate” ones were sold into prostitution. Unwanted girls were left to die of exposure.

Into this world came Christianity, specifically the writings of St. Paul. As [author Sarah] Ruden tells her readers, to call him an “oppressor of women” could “hardly be more wrong.” “Paul’s teachings on sexual purity and marriage were adopted as liberating in the pornographic, sexually exploitive Greco-Roman culture of the time . . .”

The biblical teachings about human dignity, morality, ethics, and sin were counter-cultural at the time. Today they appear to be once more. John Stonestreet notes that “sexually-predatory males didn’t go extinct, but until just recently—and thanks largely to Christian influence—they couldn’t rationalize their predations, either.”

Click here to read Stonestreet’s entire commentary on this subject or listen to it below.

[audio:http://www.breakpoint.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/BP2017-10-19.mp3|titles=#MeToo by John Stonestreet]

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