State Files Charges in Birth Dash : Medicine: Anaheim’s Dr. Charles Wesley Turner Jr. is accused of gross negligence and incompetence for timing a delivery to be the first of the decade, then whisking the child onto a Christian TV service.

An Anaheim doctor who whisked a seconds-old infant from a birthing center to display her before a cheering television church congregation on New Year’s Day has been charged with gross negligence and incompetence for allegedly endangering the mother and baby.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Jana Tuton filed the complaint on behalf of the Medical Board of California against Dr. Charles Wesley Turner Jr. The attorney general’s office is seeking to suspend or revoke Turner’s license.

At the time of the incident, in the first seconds of 1990, the mother had not yet delivered the placenta and still was under spinal anesthesia when the doctor tucked the 6-pound, 12-ounce infant into a Christmas stocking, ran with the child out of the medical building, through an outside area about 150 feet to Melodyland Church to show her off at a nationally broadcast service as the first baby of the new decade.

“He had no business leaving her in the third stage of labor,” Tuton said in an interview.

Babies, she said, are “fragile creatures in the first few minutes of life. . . . You can’t properly evaluate the baby when you’re racing across the street. If (the baby was) in distress, you have no means of dealing with it.”

The allegations were added last week to a pending complaint filed in June that charges Turner with gross negligence and incompetence in five other 1987 births.

Turner has said he controlled the birth so that it would occur seconds into the New Year by administering anesthesia to the mother and using forceps to remove the infant girl at his Covenant Birthing Center in Anaheim. Three months earlier, he had told Melodyland’s pastor that he could provide a newborn for the service, which drew 4,000 people, including a team of Christian weightlifters.

Turner did not return phone calls from The Times on Friday. But he said earlier that neither the baby nor the mother were at risk and added that he would do the same thing again if he had the chance, because it was a thrilling, momentous event that harmed no one.

Tuton, however, said Turner posed a risk to both the patient and the baby by administering anesthesia 15 minutes before the infant was born.

The complaint also alleges that Turner had been negligent with the mother’s prenatal care by failing to address the fact that the infant was abnormally small.

“His own records indicate she was always too small, and he never did anything,” Tuton said. “This is a red flag. A doctor is supposed to evaluate through an ultrasound and take appropriate measures.”

The mother and baby appear to have suffered no ill effects.

Turner has said both parents consented in the delivery room to his taking the baby to Melodyland. The mother, Brigitte Elke Palmer, 25, told The Times afterward that she “felt a little funny, because he took her and ran off with her. . . . But he wanted to have her on TV.”

Nurses removed the placenta, and Turner returned with the child after 10 minutes.

Palmer said afterward that she fully trusts Turner and “felt perfectly safe.”

She said she went along with Turner’s idea to time the birth because “it sounded fun, an exciting idea.”

Turner, 64, is a general practitioner at the Lestonnac Clinic in Orange and his own Covenant Birthing Center.

He practiced at Santa Ana Hospital Medical Center until 1988, when he was suspended from obstetrical practice there. He has been under investigation by the Medical Board of California since then.

In the original complaint filed June 27, Turner was charged with negligence during five 1987 births at the Santa Ana hospital.

Among the allegations were that he failed to diagnose growth retardation in a developing baby that was born at just 4 pounds, 3 ounces. Also, the complaint alleges that he failed to screen a high-risk patient for diabetes; ruptured the amniotic membranes prematurely in another birth; failed to diagnose a breech presentation until 10 hours into labor, and violated hospital standards for failing to alert staff members that a woman was having twins and might need emergency care.

Turner’s medical license was placed on probation for five years in 1984 for illegally prescribing drugs. It was reinstated in full in 1989.