Doctor Details Sperm Removal From Dead Man

NEW YORK — A New York doctor said Thursday he extracted sperm from the corpse of a man who died in police custody so that his widow would be able to bear his children.

“After speaking with the medical examiner and the man’s family it became evident that this man had just fairly recently been married and had expected and planned to have children,” Dr. Peter Schlegel, a urologist at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center said in a telephone interview.

The man, Anthony Baez of the Bronx, died in police custody on a street in December after an argument. His death is being investigated. The family attorney says the police killed him using an illegal chokehold.

Only hours after Baez died, his widow, Mirabel, had asked the medical examiner whether the sperm of her husband of two years could be saved. The medical examiner contacted Schlegel, who deals mostly with men who have problems with weak, dead or dying sperm.

Schlegel said the procedure he performed about 13 or 14 hours after Baez died involved making a small cut in the tube that carries the sperm from the testicles back to the body, and slipping in a tiny plastic needle and flushing out the sperm.