We can only hope so....
"Defense blames doctor, not father, in overdose" by Patricia Wen, Globe Staff | March 26, 2010
BROCKTON — Prosecutor Frank J. Middleton also condemned Dr. Kayoko Kifuji of Tufts Medical Center, calling her a quack and a disgrace to the medical profession. However, he told jurors that primary responsibility for the lethal overdose falls on the parents.
He said that the father, Michael Riley, 37, was an abusive, selfish bully who presided over the financially strapped, troubled family and that on a December night in 2006 he and his wife, Carolyn, 35, decided to give 4-year-old daughter Rebecca an overdose of the sedating drug, clonidine, to get her to sleep when she struggled with a severe respiratory illness. “It’s such an outrageous case of child abuse,’’ Middleton told jurors, who will resume deliberations this morning after meeting for several hours yesterday....
Prosecutors say the parents fabricated behavioral symptoms in all of their children to get medications to sedate them, and help the family qualify for federal childhood disability benefits.
In both trials, the medical examiner and other toxicology specialists said the girl’s bloodstream had a toxic level of clonidine, a blood pressure medication also used as a sedative for children with hyperactivity disorder. Prosecutors say that the couple nicknamed clonidine “happy medicine’’ and routinely gave it to the children when the parents wanted them to quiet down or go to bed....
Kifuji, on the witness stand in both trials, had testified that she never allowed dangerous levels of extra dosages. She initially declined to testify, invoking her right against self-incrimination. She later took the stand, however, when the prosecution granted her immunity from prosecution. She faces a medical malpractice suit in this case.
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And the verdict?
"Father guilty in girl’s fatal drugging; Gets life in prison for 1st-degree murder" by Patricia Wen, Globe Staff | March 27, 2010
BROCKTON — Capping one of the most unusual child abuse cases in Massachusetts history, a South Shore father was convicted yesterday of first-degree murder for killing his 4-year-old daughter with an overdose of a psychotropic drug, which he and his wife had nicknamed “happy medicine’’ and routinely dispensed to their three children to manage their day-to-day behavior.
Michael Riley, 37, who showed little emotion when the guilty verdict was read, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Riley’s wife, 35-year-old Carolyn, had also faced first-degree murder charge, but last month, a jury convicted her of second-degree murder, which gives her the option of parole after 15 years.
It took the Plymouth County jury — which looked visibly drained as the verdict was read, with one woman weeping — eight hours to reach its verdict. The case has drawn national attention to the use of psychotropic drugs in young children and the potential for indigent parents to abuse the federal disability system....
This trial would have drained me, too.
After the verdict, Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said he plans to ask the Board of Registration of Medicine to reopen its investigation of Kifuji, who he has said turned a blind eye to the numerous signs that the parents were troubled and reckless in dispensing drugs.
“Dr. Kifuji is unfit to have a medical license,’’ he said. “If what Dr. Kifuji did in this case is the acceptable standard of care for children in Massachusetts, then there is something very wrong in this state.’’
Shortly after Rebecca died, Kifuji had entered into a voluntary agreement with the board to halt her clinical practice. But two years later, after a grand jury declined to indict her and the board completed its own inquiry, she was allowed to return to practice last fall. She is currently seeing patients at Tufts Medical Center. Kifuji testified in both cases, but only after being granted immunity from prosecution.
Cruz said he plans to assemble the transcripts of her testimony, among other things, to present to the licensing board. That information, prosecutors said, showed negligence in how she assessed and followed patients, not just that she subscribes to the controversial belief — as do some other prominent psychiatrists — that toddlers can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Hey, anything to get tho$e drug$ $old.
For instance, Kifuji diagnosed at least two of the Riley children, while toddlers, with mental disorders after only a one-hour consultation, did not order appropriate blood work while they were on potent pills, and seemingly ignored input from preschool teachers and other clinicians who said the children seemed weak and overmedicated.
When the mother, who was in charge of giving out the drugs, admitted to Kifuji that she gave extra dosages to the children, the psychiatrist seemed extraordinarily tolerant — even sometimes saying the boosted amount was a good idea and the new norm going forward....
In both trials, the father was described as a temperamental bully who frightened the children with profanity-laced verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse. The mother was depicted as eager to please the man who married her in 1994, just a few years after they graduated from Weymouth High School.
When Michael Riley wanted the children to quiet down and ordered pills be given to them, prosecutors said, Carolyn complied. She also stood by her husband when her oldest biological daughter, who she had with another man and was later adopted, accused Michael, during a visit at the Riley home, of showing her pornography and making sexual advances....
Why not just execute the s*** bag and save the taxpayers some money and a jail space?
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