NORTHAMPTON — After hearing the prosecuting and defense attorneys’ closing arguments Thursday, the jury in the trial of Christopher Conley began its deliberations.
Conley, 37, of Northampton, is charged with attempted murder, assault and battery on a child by means of a dangerous weapon (opiates) and assault and battery on a child causing substantial bodily injury.
He is accused of injecting Liquid-Plumr into his then-7-year-old daughter’s cecostomy tube — an implanted medical device used to flush the bowels — then overdosing her on pain medication in April 2015. Doctors had to remove significant portions of the girl’s intestines and bladder in surgeries.
Judge Richard Carey handed Conley’s case over to the 12-person jury, capping off an 11-day trial that saw testimony from a parade of law enforcement and medical professionals as well as the defendant himself.
In his closing argument, Conley’s attorney Mark H. Bluver, of Greenfield, said Conley had made a false confession to police a month after the alleged poisoning. He denied that Conley’s daughter’s injuries were caused by Liquid-Plumr, saying instead her injuries were due to a lack of blood flow caused by blood clots.
But Assistant District Attorney Linda Pisano, in her final statements to the jury, declared that Conley’s confession was truthful, saying evidence presented throughout the trial corroborated what he told police about injecting his daughter with drain cleaner.
Bluver suggested to the jury that the case was “reverse engineered.” Although medical reports showed doctors believed the girl had blood clotting at the time of her admission, he said, they only latched on to their suspicion that a corrosive liquid was to blame after Conley confessed.
“The doctors actually knew what was going on,” Bluver said, pointing to pathology reports from Yale New Haven Hospital showing doctors had noticed blood clotting. “It wasn’t a medical mystery, as it has been portrayed.”
Bluver said his hired defense expert, Dr. Janice Ophoven, had concluded that there couldn’t have been a corrosive injury since, microscopically, the structure of her intestinal wall was still intact.
Bluver again brought up medical records and testimony that showed Conley’s daughter was not in distress and seemed well upon her admission, which he said was inconsistent with her alleged poisoning.
The girl’s surgeon, Dr. Doruk Ozgediz, wrote in previous emails that the events leading up to her injuries “could have happened in the (Yale New Haven) hospital,” according to Bluver. Since the actions underlying the charges are alleged to have taken place in Northampton, Bluver argued, the doctor’s suggestion could corroborate Conley’s assertion of a false confession. If jurors believed Ozgediz, he said, it would mean the court has no jurisdiction over Conley and they would be required to acquit him.
Having gone through state custody battles in the past, Conley was desperate when faced with that again in 2015, Bluver said. Making an allegedly false confession was “the dumbest thing he probably could have done in life,” Bluver said, but he asserted the medical evidence would show Conley did not inject drain cleaner into his daughter.
Pisano, pointing to Conley at the defense table, reminded the jury that they had watched his three-hour confession to police.
Pisano went through many of the statements Conley made in his confession to police and linked them with testimony or evidence from the trial. For instance, she said investigators couldn’t find drain cleaner in Conley’s home, which matched with his statement that he threw it away.
Conley had said he confessed because he couldn’t live with what he did to his daughter, leading Pisano to conclude: “His conscience had gotten the best of him.”
Although the girl may not have been “deathly ill” when admitted to the hospital in 2015, Pisano said, medical records showed she was experiencing pain, had a fever and was put on antibiotics.
Pisano said doctors could not determine whether the blood clots they found were the cause of her intestinal injuries or a consequence of drain cleaner. Pisano questioned the credibility of hired defense experts and indicated that they might have been purposefully misleading.
Ozgediz also testified to feeling a pulse in the girl’s intestines during her surgery, Pisano added, and he told the jury that injuries from corrosive liquids could take time.
“Where defense is coming up with, ‘There was some catastrophic event from a blood clot,’ defies logic,” Pisano said.
She also said Ozgediz’s “passing remark” about how he didn’t know where the alleged poisoning occurred wasn’t strong enough for a jurisdictional issue.
Pisano ended by quoting a letter Conley wrote from jail, in which he said “the most likely” explanation was that something was put in his daughter’s cecostomy tube.
“‘Normally, the simplest explanation is the correct one,’” Pisano said, quoting his letter.
Michael Connors can be reached at mconnors@gazettenet.com.