Doctor’s Trial Begins in Baby’s Death

In a case that has sent tremors through the medical community, the mother of a baby who died after an emergency room doctor transferred him by private car to another hospital testified Tuesday that she held her son in her arms as he cried during the long drive to the second hospital.

“I never heard that cry before,” she said, sobbing, “and I will never forget it.”

The mother, Rhoda Thomas, 25, was the first witness in the trial of Dr. Wolfgang Schug, an emergency room physician accused of gross negligence to a child in the February 1996 death of Thomas’ son, Cody Burrows.

In opening arguments, a prosecutor described Schug as being more concerned about his reputation and “ego” than the life of a child, while a defense attorney hailed him as a dedicated doctor who chose to practice on the front lines of medicine because he wanted to save lives.

Schug, who practiced at tiny Redbud Community Hospital near here, has been charged with second-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and willful injury to a child. A coroner attributed the death of the 11-month-old to dehydration and infection.

Thomas wept throughout her testimony, her voice often rising, as she described how she became increasingly concerned for her only child.

Remembering him in the emergency room of Redbud, Thomas said: “He just looked terrible. He didn’t look like my baby. My baby, he was really a big boy, and he looked so skinny. . . .”

Schug is believed to be the first physician prosecuted for second-degree murder by the state attorney general. The prosecution has stunned the medical community in this rural, mountainous region north of Napa and raised concerns in both state and national medical associations, which oppose punishing doctors criminally for possible mistakes made in the care of patients.

In opening statements, Deputy Atty. Gen. Vernon Pierson told the jury that Schug, after keeping Cody in the emergency room about eight hours, finally realized the baby was seriously ill and tried to conceal it out of concern for his professional reputation.

“This is a case about the last few days and, more importantly, the last few hours of an 11-month-old infant,” Pierson told the jury. “And the issues are credibility, ego and details.”

Cody died after spending much of the day in Redbud’s emergency room, where Schug was the only doctor on duty. The baby had been vomiting and had diarrhea, and his parents had brought him to the emergency room twice before on that weekend.

Pierson said the baby desperately needed fluids, but Schug waited too long to try to insert an IV and refused to summon help from an on-call surgeon because he did not want to admit he had misjudged the boy’s condition.

Redbud has no pediatric ward, and Schug finally told Cody’s parents to take the baby to Santa Rosa Community Hospital after consulting by telephone with a pediatrician there. The 55-mile journey over winding mountain roads took more than an hour, and Cody had stopped breathing by the time he reached the Santa Rosa hospital. He never recovered.

Pierson said Schug misled the pediatrician at Santa Rosa about the seriousness of Cody’s condition and then tried to cover up his mistakes in a four-page addendum he inserted into Cody’s medical record after the boy’s death.

“Ultimately, there was a balancing that took place between protecting himself and doing what was right and proper to protect the child, and the defendant chose to protect himself,” Pierson said.

But Robert Moore, a lawyer for Schug, said a defense medical expert will testify that Cody was probably suffering from a “rotovirus,” a type of intestinal infection that strikes 500,000 children a year in the United States and causes 300 to 400 deaths.

He said Cody’s weight loss indicated only mild dehydration, and although a blood test revealed some measurements that were in the “panic” range, they did not suggest a medical emergency.

Experts also will testify that Cody suffered from kidney failure, and if Schug had tried to give him fluids intravenously at Redbud, the baby probably would have died there, Moore said.

He described Schug as a “caring, careful, hard-working physician.”

Calling Cody’s death “a terrible loss, a terrible tragedy,” Moore said Schug and his family feel sympathy for Cody’s loved ones.

Schug’s trial is expected to continue for about a month.