Medical examiner blasts defense witness on autopsy findings
Prosecution rests in three-week Oregon City faith-healing trial
Deputy State Medical Examiner Christopher Young testified Tuesday, explaining autopsy procedures after the death of tiny Ava Worthington in March 2008.
Randy L. Rasmussen / Pool Photo The Oregonian
At least two people left an Oregon City courtroom in disgust Tuesday morning and many others lowered their heads, averting their eyes, as the heavy breathing of quiet crying permeated the room when prosecutors showed startling and graphic photos on large television monitors of a neck dissection during 15-month-old Ava Worthington’s autopsy.
The dramatic photos were shown during the final hours of the three-week trial of Carl Brent and Raylene Worthington, who are charged with manslaughter and criminal negligence in the March 2, 2008, death of their ailing daughter.
The Worthington family belongs to Oregon City’s Followers of Christ Church, which believes in faith healing instead of medical treatment. They were charged under a 1999 state law that removed the “spiritual treatment” defense from state manslaughter cases.
The Worthingtons’ tiny daughter died at about 7:15 p.m. in her parents’ bed from a blood infection and pneumonia. She also had a large cyst growing on the right side of her neck — described as the size of a man’s wallet — that prosecutors and doctors said could have choked her and left her malnourished.
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After defense expert witness Dr. Janice Ophoven of Minnesota cast doubt last week on Deputy State Medical Examiner Christopher Young’s autopsy methods, saying that by removing the chest organs and cutting the bottom of the airway, the tension in the neck was lost and Young couldn’t know the actual orientation of the neck muscles and organs before his dissection.
Following Young’s testimony, the prosecution rested its rebuttal case. Closing arguments in the trial that began June 29 begin at 1:30 p.m.
Child not 26 inches tall
In prosecution rebuttal, Young showed in extreme detail and explained his methods and reasons they were the best way to reveal the effect the mass had on Ava’s ability to breathe.
“The contents of her neck were under extreme pressure,” Young told the court Tuesday morning. “Dr. Ophoven suggests that removing the chest organs and the neck organs all in a block would have somehow shown that the lumen (air tube) of the neck was suppressed, if that had been performed, the lumen would have been opened up because you no longer have the skin pressing on the cystic hygroma, you no longer have the muscles and the bones pushing forward on the cystic hygroma.”
Young also used a photo of Ava on the autopsy table to back up his original assertion that she was about 26 inches tall when she died.
Dr. Janice Ophoven of Minnesota testified for the defense in the Worthington manslaughter trial. POOL PHOTO THE OREGONIAN.
The defense introduced a photo of Ava from two months before she died, showing her leaning against an end table that was slightly more than 25 inches high. Ava appeared taller than the table. But her feet were not shown in the photo, and it was unclear whether she was standing on something or on the tips of her toes.
Young, using drainage holes on the autopsy table as markers, re-measured the area Ava too up on the table after the testimony about the table and said it was about 26 inches.
‘I feel more qualified’
During cross examination, defense attorney Mark Cogan, who represents Carl Brent Worthington, repeatedly asked Young if he felt his qualifications in assessing Ava’s corpse were equal to those of Ophoven, with 30 years specialty experience in autopsies of children.
“This particular case, the association between a mass and the compression on the airway and the resulting pneumonia that ensued and finding the same infection in the blood, the connection between all this is so rudimentary that a first year medical student could (see it),” Young said.
When pressed again, Young countered: “I feel more qualified in this particular case because I did the autopsy and saw the actual findings. Furthermore, there is no forensic pediatric pathology certification.”
“Do you think that your five years of experience are equal to those of someone who’s specialized in pediatric cases for 30 years?” Cogan asked.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Young said.