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State v. Thomas2/27/2004
act Dr. Shelton. Dr. Shelton was no longer on duty, but another physician advised her to "continue to give him plenty of fluids, and it should clear up." However, the blood did not clear up and Mrs. Day made repeated telephone calls to the doctors. Under the advice of the doctors, Mrs. Day continued to feed Mr. Day fluids, and the bleeding stopped at around 5:00 a.m. However, Mrs. Day noticed that her husband was weaker than usual.
Dr. Shelton later contacted Mrs. Day and instructed her to bring Mr. Day to the emergency room. She was unable to get him into her vehicle, so she called the ambulance service for assistance. Mr. Day was paler than usual and his blood pressure was low. Mrs. Day followed the ambulance to Methodist Central. At the emergency room, she was informed that the doctors would have to perform surgery because they found something abnormal in Mr. Day's stomach. He was then placed on full life support. The surgery revealed that his "bladder had burst, and sepsis had set in, and the first thing that went was his kidneys." Faye Day was informed that "it would just be a matter of time" before her husband died. His lungs started collapsing, and the doctors "just kept bringing him back." Mr. Day continued to weaken, and he finally died on October 2, 1999.
On October 4, 1999, Dr. O.C. Smith, the medical examiner for Shelby County, performed an autopsy on James Day. Dr. Smith testified that the ruling on this particular autopsy took longer than usual because of the "circumstances in which a person received a gunshot wound to the back of the head about two and a half years prior to their dying as a result of an infection from a ruptured bladder." In his final ruling, Dr. Smith opined that "Mr. Day did, indeed, die as a result of the infection from the ruptured bladder which could be directly related back to his gunshot wound." Accordingly, Dr. Smith determined that the "manner of death" was a "homicide."
Dr. Smith's examination revealed that Mr. Day did not have any "old or blistered or healing" bedsores and the lack of the presence of contractures in the muscles, joints and tendons indicated that "he would have some sort of physical activity applied to his limbs." Dr. Smith located the scar resulting from the surgery incident to the gunshot wound. In relation to the scar on the back of Mr. Day's scalp, Dr. Smith, during an internal examination, found a "four-by-four-centimeter defect in the occipital bone or the bone that's right in the back of the head . . . ; that area showed operative intervention." An examination of the victim's brain revealed that the cerebellum, a portion of the brain, had suffered damage in which tissue had been destroyed.
The examination further revealed that Mr. Day had suffered from heart disease in that at least one of his coronary arteries had about ninety-percent blockage and the others had between forty and ten percent blockage. Dr. Smith opined that, due to the extent of the blockage, the condition could have existed prior to the gunshot wound. The color of Mr. Day's liver indicated the presence of a fatty deposition. Also, the inflammation of the lining of the cavity of the abdomen was indicative of a condition known as peritonitis. Of significance, however, was the finding of a four-centimeter tear in the victim's bladder that had been repaired at surgery. According to Dr. Smith, this finding was significant because,
in reviewing both the autopsy findings and the medical history, it became clear that Mr. Day had suffered the effect of an overwhelming infection of the body known as sepsis where bacteria will get into the bloodstream and distributed . . . essentially throughout the body. When that co
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 Tennessee Personal Injury Attorneys
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