Bay County ME Placed on Probation
August 10, 2006
The Bay County Medical Examiner, who has been under fire in
recent months following the death of a teenager at the Bay County
Boot Camp, has been found negligent by the state’s Medical
Examiner’s Commission.
The commission also placed Dr. Charles Siebert on supervised
probation for the remaining10-months of his contract with Bay
County. The panel of commissioners found 35 of 698 autopsies
performed by Seibert to be negligent and that he had failed in his
duties.
The panel ruled 4-1 in favor of the penalty and Siebert, who
earns $180,000 a year, has 30-days to either accept the punishment
or to file an appeal.
One notable instance of his negligence is an autopsy he performed
on woman killed by a tornado during Hurricane Ivan in 2004. Some of
the mistakes in the autopsy included stating the woman had a
prostate and testes. The mother of the deceased, Francis Terry, has
been an outspoken critic of Siebert.
Most of the negligence that the panel cited came from Siebert’s
use of “canned” autopsy reports that used the same terminology to
detail conditions of organs and other body parts and that Siebert
used a basic template and did not adjust to each individual case.
Siebert has not decided on if he’ll file an appeal, but he still
proclaims his innocence and has stated he does not use a template.
"There's only so many ways you can describe what a spleen looks
like," said Siebert, in an Associated Press report.
Siebert achieved national headlines following his controversial
autopsy of Martin Lee Anderson, the 14-year old boy that died
following a brief stay at the Bay County Boot Camp. Siebert’s
autopsy claimed the boy died of sickle cell trait.
The autopsy of Anderson was not of the cases that were reviewed
by the panel. Though a second autopsy performed by another medical
examiner found that Anderson died of asphyxiation, brought on by the
guards using ammonia capsules on Anderson in an attempt to revive
the youth.
Attorney for the Anderson family, Benjamin Crump, has filed suit
against Bay County and is currently waiting for a special prosecutor
to file chargers against the guards and nurse.
In April, Attorney General Charlie Christ filed a complaint with
the Medical Examiner’s Commission following numerous complaints
about Siebert.
For more background on the Anderson story, read the
following articles:
Also, check out the following:
|
