July 9, 2025 • 45 mins
Update on the decapitation of Baby Isaiah during his birth. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss what happened and how the family is still having to fight for justice. The parents, Jessica Ross and Traveon Taylor Sr. have filed lawsuits against the hospital and the doctor but the first suit is about the damage done to the family by the doctor hired to do the autopsy of baby Isaiah, Dr. Jackson Gates. Dr. Gates posted pictures and video of the autopsy without the parents knowledge or permission and a jury awards the parents $2 million in damages.
Transcript Highlights
00:04.96 Introduction
00:48.33 Parental grief with loss of a child
04:45.27 Use of forceps during childbirth
06:37.45 The death of baby Isaiah
10:04.56 Explanation of child birth options
14:28.88 Doctor applied enough force to decapitate baby
20:30.53 Baby Isaiah head placed on body so it wouldn't fall off
25:19.76 Funeral home reported decapitation
30:06.68 Head removed during delivery
35:09.52 Paying for autopsy
39:42.33 Lawsuit filed when autopsy doctor placed images of autopsy on social media
44:59.93 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality diarist, but Joseph's gotten more. I want to say
something to you today, and I want you to hear
me right and understand. In my opinion, and this comes
from both professional and personal experience, I wager that there
(00:22):
is no darker place, particularly for a parent, to be
in than when it comes to the loss of a child.
You're looking for rock bottom.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You're here.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It seems like nothing else in the world matters. It's
as if a part of you has died as well,
and it has. I want to revisit a case that
that we've talked about previously on Bodybacks, and the reason
(01:07):
I want to talk about this today is that there
have been developments. There have been developments in the case
involving a tiny little life, a life that died in
the midst of childbirth and the horror that followed that event.
(01:35):
What I'm talking about is the early premature death of
a little one named Tree Beyond Isaiah Taylor Jr. Otherwise
known as Baby Isaiah. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
(01:56):
is Bodybacks day. Back when we initially covered Baby Isaiah's death.
I remember following following that episode, I felt a sudden
need to go take a shower, and I needed to
(02:20):
scrub my brain because I couldn't believe some of the
things that we were hearing that were coming out of well,
let's face at the south side of Atlanta, down in
Clayton County where this baby had died at Southern Regional Hospital.
That story in and of itself is horrific, but what
(02:42):
happened afterwards and trying to understand what brought about this
little angel's death, It's like it you see something that
is bad and then you think it can't get any
worse than all of a sudden it does.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It got worse.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Did this first episode about baby Isaiah dying at birth,
and we we will recover this again for those who
haven't heard the story yet. But you know, I didn't
really go into a personal side of this that much.
And I when my daughter Hannah was born, she was stuck.
(03:25):
She was not getting over a part. Now Loadonna had
had a child previously by C section, and she wanted
to have Hannah vaginally, a vaginal delivery, and everything was fine,
but her head was not. She was getting stuck. She
was not getting over a hump in there that was
(03:46):
keeping her from and the doctor was not operating as
quickly as the nurse who was standing there with me
thought he should be. But she's a nurse. I'm the dad,
this is my wife, and you're the doctor. I don't
like what he was doing either, but the bottom line
is I realized then how out of control I was.
(04:08):
I'm not in I cannot do anything to help, and
thankfully this nurse when the doctor turned, she said, Dave,
grab her head and push it up into her belly
as hard as you can, and that's how we got
Hannah out. He'd brought up forceps and actually did cut her,
(04:28):
which I know there's a necessity to them, but please, God,
love you don't do that. Yeah, but because it does
leave damage that stays for a lifetime and it can
be really bad.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
We didn't experience that part, but.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, I had a friend of mind that during his
birth he wound up having a His eye was compromised
in birth as a result of them the manipulation that
went on, and his eye was always as some people
might call it a lazy eye.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Drooping, but there was still visible Structurally, you could tell
that there was something that was off, and a lot
of it has to do with how malleable the skull is,
I think, but that malleability can sometimes lead to I
think maybe some practitioners thinking that the body is more
(05:26):
resilient sometimes than it actually is. And you know, in
the case of Isaiah, well.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
When we heard about how that what happened though, Joe,
in that case, the nurses were talking about the pressure
that came to bear and the section that this doctor Houston,
we probably need to go over that a little bit
because whereas I was present when things were happening with
Lodonna and Hannah, and I realized then again how difficult
(05:53):
this is. We take it for granted. We take so
many things in our life today for granted. Childbirth cannot
be taken granted. It's a moment where the new life,
the life of your partner, everybody is at risk. There's
a lot of risk going on at childbirth, and I'm
so thankful that we have in this country such a
(06:13):
great record for having children. But you know what, the
story of baby Isaiah and the cover up that took
place after it, Yeah, tells you that things are not
what they seem sometimes and you better trust, you better
study up before you go to have a baby. Know
what a normal delivery time is, know how long a
woman should be in labor before you push for something else.
(06:36):
Because apparently this doctor didn't have a clue. It boggles
my mind.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Joe, Yeah, it does mine as well. And that you
you know, you have to you know, you have to
look at their track record. That's why. You know. The
thing about it is, I think in America we're so
prone to well, this person has MD after their name,
and they have these board certifications. Obviously they know what
(07:02):
they're doing. And they wouldn't put you know, my unborn
child soon to be born at risk, and wouldn't put
and I'm speaking as a husband now, I wouldn't put
my wife's life at risk because they've been trained to
do these sort of things. And when you know, we
begin to discuss this and talk about the horror that
(07:23):
was involved and what was and I'll say it, I'll
say it right here, what was perpetrated upon this very
young couple day where they didn't they didn't know any better.
I mean, you remember when you were a young parent.
I remember when you know, I didn't have my first
child until I was a little bit older. You know,
It's not like I was a nineteen year old kid.
(07:46):
But still you lean into the idea that they're so
well trained and that they're so highly educated and that
they're going to help you. You can't see this kind
of catashee happening particularly to you, you know, and the
ones that you love, and then insult to injury, drag
(08:10):
everybody into this idea that we're going to present these
circumstances as if it's just the child died. The child died.
There was nothing we could.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Do and nothing we did to heart to cause it
and nothing.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah, we cannot you know, we're not responsible for this.
But David, I gotta tell you, man, the physical evidence
here bears out something a bit different, now, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Oh buddy, we know it started July ninth of twenty
twenty three, two years coming up on the two year anniversary.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Wow, this baby would be a little toddler right now.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
And Tevion and Isaiah Taylor Sr. And Jessica Ross expecting
the child. They go through everything that she goes through,
the prenatal care. They do everything they're supposed to do.
She goes into labor ninth and during the vaginal birth,
the baby's the baby boy's shoulders got stuck. Now, you
(09:07):
know a lot more about biology and how the body
works than I do, but a shoulder getting stuck during
birth doesn't seem like it would be something unheard of,
something that can't be overcome in this day and age
that you know, something's obviously not right here.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, And so most of the time in these deliveries,
there are multiple ways that you can kind of spur
things on. I think one of the things that that
kind of comes to mind first. Then these these are
not necessarily applicable in every one of the circumstances. But
some things we just kind of naturally think about is like, well,
(09:49):
an episiotomy if you've ever heard that term, if you
think of if you think of the vaginal opening as
a clock face at six o'clock position, there will be
an ensue made, and that's to accommodate the size of
the child in order to facilitate because there's this critical point.
(10:10):
I think that when practitioners get to where they have
to make a decision if if we're going to do
a C section, we need to do it now before
it gets to this point. And that's you know, that's
the rub here. But you know, there's suction that's available,
there's various rotations of the child's body that can take place.
(10:34):
That's one of the things that doctors will do, and
the nurses, the midwives that go in and they can
turn turn the baby in order to facilitate this. And
it takes, you know, you have to have a great
scientific mind to be an effective practitioner, but it takes
a bit of finesse too, that comes along with just
(10:54):
experience and these sorts of things, and every every person
is different and how they're going to respond because not
everybody's body is the same.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Man. You know, I'm so glad you said that, Joe,
because as I was sitting here thinking about this, you know,
of my children didn't have had a little bit of
problem with Andrew, but no problems with Tyler. Haley was
a c section, but then Hannah that that was the
only problem I had encountered with the child being born.
And I'm still remembering that moment, and that's why this
(11:27):
really has hit home for me. It really has because
I made some decisions for my wife that I had
to make that I wasn't prepared to make, you know,
just in case. But I also look at this now
and realize that this child they tried to suction, they
tried to use traction to pull this baby. Yeah, his
(11:48):
shoulders are stuck. He's not coming out. And this woman,
this poor woman is in labor for hours, Joe, for
hours and hours, and the baby gets stuck. At eight
forty pm. They know the time the baby gets stuck.
Eight forty pm. That's when the trauma begins. They meaning
the nurses and everything're like, we need to do an
(12:09):
emergency C section. Doctor didn't do it. Kept pulling, kept pulling,
kept using suction, was using traction rather, what is traction
on the head of a baby?
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Well, would this methodology that you're referring to. They can
brace the head in a particular way so that they
can apply leverage into vaginal opening and literally pull. I
think that a lot of people think, you know, automatically,
when you think about traction, Okay, the first thing you
(12:48):
think about is when you're treating an adult that has
like a neck injury.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, That's what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, and you set up in traction in order to
elongate the spine. And that's generally from a manipulative standpoint,
And I mean that in the sense of manipulation of
spine and the musculatory of destructure and everything. A matter
of fact, one of the medical examiners I used to
work with, he's passed on now. He had he had
(13:16):
he suffered from gyon Bret syndrome, and he had all
kinds of muscle issues and those sorts of things. And
he would put himself in traction in his office every day,
and his doctor had urged him to do this, and
he would counterweight it with bags of water. And I'll
(13:36):
never forget this contraption has set up on his sofa
and it would literally elongate or pull his head. And
I never could understand the ration. And I was I
didn't have deep conversations with this man. He was very,
very formal person. I just saw it in there and
I asked him one time, what is that And he says,
that's traction for my gym beret. And I'm thinking, hmm,
(13:58):
that's interesting. I didn't know you need attraction for gambret.
But whatever. But you're talking about when you apply when
you apply this kind of force to a baby that's
not even born yet. Okay, we always think about how
(14:20):
resilient little kids are, you know, they can take certain
types of force and trauma that we as adults can't.
But that tissue is so very fragile, Dave, and all
it takes is this kind of force being exerted over
a protracted period of time, which is what happened. And Dave,
I got to tell you for our listeners that don't know,
(14:45):
she applied so much for us for such a long
period of time that she actually wound up to capitate
this child. Do you remember, Dave, I know I do vividly.
(15:20):
When your newborn is swaddled for the first time and
they hand that child to you. First off, you have
this feeling that you're insufficient to the task, even though
people have been doing this for thousands of thousands of years.
You think you're the one person in all of human
history that's not going to be able to do this.
(15:41):
And it's a real fear. It's a real fear, particularly
I think for men in particularly because we can be
really clumsy.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
And sometimes I was going to drop Andrew, that was
my biggest football or big he was. He was almost
ten pounds and he's huge, and it was like I
kept thinking, if I drop him, what happens? You know
exactly Why couldn't I get that out of my head?
Speaker 1 (16:04):
And it's not terrified and it's terrifil I'm just putting
them in the car to bring them home. It was
for me, you know. But the joy that is kind
of it's one of those moments. It's a spiritual moment.
I would say. My wife always says that when her
children have been born, she knows that God was present
(16:25):
in the room. That's what she's always said. And when
that child is handed over to you and you embrace
that child, I get chills just speaking about it right now,
that precious moment does And Dave, it's my understanding if
and I might be misremembering, but it's it is true
that they were not allowed to hold this baby immediately, no,
(16:48):
and that that's where this thing kind of really goes
off the rails.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Here.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
You're right, it goes off the wheels fairly early on.
But here's the deception, and here's the Okay, she's in
labor for a number of hours, the shoulders are stuck,
and they say, okay, we're going to have to do
an emergency sea section. So hours after labor begins, they
wheel her upstairs to do this emergency sea section. As
(17:15):
Joe told you just a minute ago, the baby was decapitated.
They actually pulled the baby's trunk or the body without
the head by sea section, yep, and had her. She
had to give birth to the baby's head. Yeah, Now
(17:38):
they didn't. The parents don't know what's going on. They
don't have a clue because these are kids. Yeah they're
young in my mind. Yeah, well yeah and they are,
but you know what, they don't know what to expect. Look,
the doctor's there, they're doing a C section. You don't
know what all's going on, because you know, you know
what you're told. And so as they're doing these things
(17:59):
and they get the they then take the baby. The
parents don't know the baby is decapitated. Now they are
told the baby didn't live. And the nurses or the staff,
I'm gonna say staff. I don't want to impugne anybody.
I don't know who did this. I don't know, but
I know that this couple wanted to hold their baby,
(18:22):
dead or not. We want to hold our baby. That's
our baby. We've already got a name for this baby.
It's Trevian Isaiah. You know this is myr son. I'm
gonna and so the staff then wrapped this baby's body
and head in such a way that they placed the
head on top of the body and wrapped it like
(18:46):
you would swaddow a baby, but wrapped it tighter around
the head so they could pass it off as a
natural death at birth, that there was nothing wrong, just
the baby died at birth.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Now I go back to my.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Fear of holding you know, my son Andrew when he
was born, and I'm thinking they were probably the same way,
even though they know the baby is dead, but they're
thinking the baby's still born. You know that they're thinking
something along those lines has transpired. They're grieving, they're exhausted,
their panic, they're all the horrible things that you must
go through at that moment I cannot imagine. And they're
(19:24):
handed this baby as if there's no more damage to
look at. They were lied to, They were cheated and
lied to by everybody involved. How do you hold a
baby's head onto.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
How do you know? How do you fix the body
to the point where you feel comfortable enough as a clinician,
and clinician is very broad term to mean anybody who
had a hand in this. You feel comfortable enough to
hand the deep, decay appetated body of an infant. But
(20:03):
yet the head has been placed and secured quote unquote
in a manner in which you feel secure enough that
the head I hate say this, is not going to
roll off and wind up in the floor or wind
up in mom's lap. Because I got to tell you, you know,
when my child was born, my children have been born,
(20:25):
I don't go to their toes to kiss their toes.
I'm kissing all over that forehead. When my son Isaac died,
I was holding him when he passed, and I kiss
that baby all over his face, you know. And it's
one of those things I'm telling you. It's one of
those things as parent that you it's almost like it's
(20:49):
confirmatory to me it is all right, being the father
of a child that passed away. I think that it's
just that touch you want to confirm that a child
has passed on, you know, and just opposite, I mean,
when a child is alive, you want to feel that
warmth that transfers from their body to your lips as
(21:09):
you're touching your lips to them. But Dave, if it
kind of a hero appears in all of this, because
if it had not been for the funeral home. In
this case, my friend, the family would have been none
the wiser. Can you imagine being a funeral director, you know,
(21:34):
after the family has called you and said, look, we
want to honor our child, have a service for the child,
and yes, and let me tell you how this works
in case folks are not aware. When someone passed away
to the hospital, it can be a baby or an adult.
They will fill out an entire death packet at the
(21:54):
hospital and when it's generally a social worker comes and
talks to the family to say what funeral home do
you want? Want to handle this? And the social worker
many times will reach out, you know, to the funeral home.
Of course, families reaching out at the same time too,
and then they will arrange for the body to be
picked up. Here's something that folks don't know. When babies die,
(22:18):
they pass away in the hospital. Did you know that
we have a little funeral homes in particularly have these
They have these little open boxes. I guess they're probably
about three feet now, it's probably not that, about two
feet by a foot and they're hinged and they have
a handle right in the center of it, and it
(22:38):
looks like a miniature casket almost, And what they will
do is they'll walk in to the morgue and they'll
open they'll open the top of this box and they
place the baby in the box. They cover the baby
in the sheet, and they transport the baby and no
one really knows what they have in the box. Okay,
it's not like they walk in with a stretcher. They'll
just walk right back out, getting the funeral home vehicle
(23:00):
and off they go to the funeral home to preped body.
First time I ever saw one of those things, it was,
you know, I've seen a lot of ghastly things that
kind of center like a night gallery, you know, Rod's
Serling night Gallery. Kind of shiver up my spine because
it's got this kind of creepy old feel to it.
When you see these boxes, and they used to always
(23:21):
have these. But when the funeral home came to pick
up this child's body, I can only imagine that the
people in the hospital that we're thinking about this, they
were thinking, how in the world are we going to
explain this? Because now that body's out of our control.
That body's out of our control, you know what. That's
(23:42):
that's no different day than these cases that we have taught,
and we've had this discussion brother, where we've talked about
how perpetrators that kill individuals sometimes they will bury them
at their own home. They will retain the body so
that they always can guarantee that they have total and
complete control all over the body. And for me, that
(24:02):
pops in my mind with this where they're thinking, oh,
my lord, you know, once once that threshold is called
is crossed, we no longer have control over these remains.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
That's exactly what happened. You know.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
It was kind of interesting here because I've approached this
having experienced something now that I'm much more familiar with
the process of death at a hospital, And I look
at this young couple. They expected to go into the
hospital as too and come out with a family of
(24:34):
three and beginning their life together. And now they're faced
with all of these very fast decisions that have to
be made because and they're pushed on it. They want
to answers, they want to know what happened. They're told
by the hospital that they don't have a right to
a free autopsy. You know, they want to know what happened,
(24:54):
you know, why did my baby die? Why is my
son not going home with me, and the hospital is like, Noah,
you don't.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
You don't have a right to know. I mean, yeah,
you can pay for it if you want to pay
to have it done.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
You have done. But just baby died. Babies died during birth.
It happened. Sorry, sorry, And so they're kind of bum
rushed out of the place now as this baby was
taken to the nursing the funeral home. And I'm so
glad you mentioned the heroic nature of this because had
it not been for the funeral home, nobody would have known.
(25:26):
The cover up would have been easy. And I'm gonna
be honest with you, I wonder how many times things
are done, you know, with a phone call and a
couple thousand dollars to somebody. Think about it, they could
have done a number of things that we and we
would have never known about this, but they were they
were told they had to pay for their own autopsy,
(25:47):
and after and then after they found out from the
nursing home that what had actually happened, you know, that
there was a decapitation. And that's where I was wondering
from your standpoint, from the what happens when look, I
get it, that baby dies naturally they're a still birth
something like that.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
That's a.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
That I don't I mean, as as horrible as that
would be, that would have to be seen as different
than a baby that is decapitated, right, it.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Would, it would. And I got to tell you with
a this is the interesting thing with and this would
be and the way the way clinicians will frame this,
and it's always made my teeth hurt every time I
hear this term. They would use the term medical misadventure,
(26:39):
and they throw that term around a lot. Well, it's
a medical misadventure. Oh well, you know, that's just the
way things are. Medical misadventure, medical misadventure. And I've worked
cases day with quote unquote medical misadventure where there was
(27:00):
where there's there was such shoddy work that was done
that it would be it would equate two for a
civilian in a civilian world outside And when I say civilian,
I mean when not talking about military, I'm talking about
an average an average person outside of the clinical environment.
You'd be charged with manslaughter at a baseline, right, Okay,
(27:24):
But yet they'll use that term medical misadventure many times.
And I can tell you that's probably how you know,
that's what they're thinking perhaps in this particular case, and yeah,
they had to. And well, let me educate you about
one more thing. I feel. I feel like I'm preaching
right now.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
No questions I have about this.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Well, listen, if a child dies, there are so many.
First off, you want to know why did they die?
Because if the parents which we know this parent, these
parents had had gone through all of their prenatal meetings. Okay,
they've been being followed all these sorts of things, and
the days arriving, you know, they're all excited.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
For all.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I know, they went through Lama's classes together. I have
no idea, but you have to be able to give
a scientific reason why this child died. I think in
most cases, even with still bursts, that as part and
parcel of the service that the hospital provides for, you know,
(28:33):
a birth. If the child dies, it's pretty standard for
them to do a hospital autopsy. Okay, you know it
truly is. And this idea that no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
you're not. But back to the medical misadventure, Dave, this
is actually a case that's reportable to the corner, right,
That's what I was thinking, asking, Yeah, yeah, it is.
(28:56):
And most of the time, still bursts were reportable to
the corner Medical Examiner. Most of them are. I mean,
I can't tell you how many still birth cases I've
taken report of over the phone. Now, I wouldn't go
to the hospital to I wouldn't go to the hospital
to examine a stillborn child, but it would still be
reportable to us. We'd write a report of okay, And
(29:16):
sometimes a baby would have a name. Sometimes a baby
would not have a name. It's a weird kind of
thing that happens. And when you think about this, this
ain't a still birth. This is not how you would
define a still birth. Okay. Now, if you've ever been
(29:37):
in a laboring delivery suite, you know that you know
there's monitors everywhere. Oh yeah, monitor the baby's heartbeat, all
that sort of stuff. And this is I think what's
the big mystery right now is to know if they
had that fetal heart monitor going at that point in
tom And this will be a question that will come up,
(30:01):
at what point in time did that child to rest?
Because this is not a still birth. This is not
some kind of genetic thing that's going on where you
know the child is not going to be viable and
they die maybe in utero, which happens many times, and
the mother has to deliver. Those are very sad. That
is a classic still birth. This ain't no still birth, brother,
(30:25):
You're talking about a baby who's had his head removed
during delivery.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
This is a traumatic death.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Years ago, when I was working down in New Orleans,
I was working as a path assistant and as a
corner investigator and was working with this one physician and
he was rather in circles of forensic pathology. He was
(31:13):
nationally well known, and I never could understand why he
was working at our office. It's not that our office
was a bad place, it's the level of renown that
this individual had experienced prior to arrival at our office
(31:34):
was pretty significant. They had been a deputy Chief medical
Examiner in a major US city at one point in time,
but yet they landed at our office. So you always
have questions about that sort of thing. As it turned out,
this individual had made a stop in between their deputy
(31:58):
chief Medical Examiner position and our position in New Orleans.
They had stopped off at another office, and while at
that office, this forensic pathologist was tasked with trying to
understand could a baby sustain a fracture at a certain
(32:21):
age when falling from a certain height. The forensic pathologists
took it upon themselves to begin to conduct experiments, and
as a result of those experiments, a baby or baby's
(32:42):
were dropped from a variety of heights. And it just
so happened that this was witnessed by staff member who
reported them. When I found that out that this individual
had been involved in the so called experiments, I couldn't
(33:05):
believe that I was standing at the same table with
this individual doing post mortem examinations with them, because they
did wind up getting sued, they did wind up being
found liable, and the university that they were associated with
was sued as well. You know, it had only been
(33:27):
I guess at that time that was in the eighties,
It had only been I don't know, probably at that
time less than forty years earlier, when a group of
people were doing experiments on another group of people. It's
something that's so incredibly abhorrent and it runs contrary to
(33:49):
every single ideal that we hold up in the medical
legal community. And Dave, I got to tell you, brother,
if you thought the story the decapitation when it comes
to basic baby Isaiah is bad. This is what we meant.
It went from bad to worse, and now we have
(34:10):
new news that has burst on the horizon relative to
all of this.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
As you know, they did file lawsuits. You know, in
this day and age, you're not going to get by
without somebody standing in the gap and saying something is
wrong here, and we're going to help you take care
of this. And that's what they did. Thankfully, somebody did
help parents provide well. They sued just about everybody involved.
(34:38):
But one thing they did, Joe, they got their own
autopsy done. Remember how I told you to the hospital
said they weren't entitled to a free autopsy. That was
the hospital's way of bullying them.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I think it was.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I concur with your assessment, brother, But.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
They got an autopsy, they found it. And to be clear,
I asked you about this earlier during the review show
because I didn't know you could pay for an autopsy,
Like I mean, I didn't really think about it because
I would just assume that if a body needs an autopsy,
it gets done, not that you actually have to fight
(35:15):
to have an autopsy done on your child. And that's
what they did. They paid to have it done. They
found a doctor, they would do it. Now, that was
the good news. The bad news is well again, remember
that this family did not hear from the doctor, the nurses,
or anybody at the hospital what had happened to their baby.
They didn't find that out. They found it out from
(35:37):
the nursing home, I mean not in the funeral home. So,
realizing that they were lied to, they went and hired
doctor Jackson Gates to perform an autopsy. Doctor Jackson Gates
does an autopsy and then, in a violation of every
(36:00):
thing I can imagine. I cannot think of one redeeming
thing to say about what he did with a videotape
of the autopsy.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
You know, for years, this is okay, Just so that
we're clear on this. For years, I've had people that
would come to me and they would they would beg
to be able to attend an autopsy, just people that
are curious. I've got tons of medical student, nursing students,
(36:38):
and of course cops. Because autopsies are not something that
you normally get access to. First off, you have no
way of vetting the person that's going to come through
the door. You don't know who's going to show or
what they're what their true reason is. And nowadays, in particular,
you never know what the reason is. You know what
I mean. You can't do anything in public without somebody
(37:01):
having a camera and their videotape. You could just be
having a regular everyday discussion with somebody and something that
you say can be taken out of context. Well, I
got to tell you, it might wind up on social media.
And Dave, again, we have an example of somebody, a pathologist,
(37:24):
who felt like that it was a good idea to
do the post warnum examination on this precious child and
then display the body in an Instagram reel, an Instagram reel, Dave, Yeah,
(37:52):
pictures and video of this child's macerated body and display
so it's like.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
And by the way, without the permission of the parents.
Now I could see if and I can't imagine a
parent doing this. But let's just say for the sake
of argument, that doctor Gates went to them and said, look,
there's some educational value. I would like to share some
of this autoposy with whoever, other professionals, whatever.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
There might be some value in that.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
I don't know what it would be, but doctor Jackson
Gates doesn't bother to ask them permission to do anything.
He posts them on Instagram for all the world to see,
and that's how they found out about it.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
It wasn't like they.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Called for permission, Joe. Somebody saw it and said, hey,
what is this?
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Well, you ought to have the good sense to understand
first off, that it doesn't You don't have to be
a board certified forensic pathologist to appreciate this. This is
going to blind up in a lawsuit. And I'm not
talking about the Instagram thing, which obviously does. However, the
death of this baby at this hospital is going to
(39:06):
wind up in litigation. In what universe have you decided
that this is a good idea that I should take
imagery of this baby and display it for the entire world.
Particularly that's bad enough, but particularly understanding the fact that
(39:27):
this is going.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
To go to court.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Okay, it's going to go to court. I can you know,
dollars to donuts, I bet you that it's going to
go to court, which it's going to and you're going
to You've so not only not only are you compromising
the not only are these poor parents being subjected to
this Emotionally, what happened to their baby? What they eventually
(39:52):
found out with the decapitation during birth. And not only
are you humiliating them further because this is the ultimate
and humiliation by displaying the desecrated remains of their baby,
now you're putting them at risk for what's going to
happen in the courts later on, you know, by displaying
(40:15):
the images. You know, because any any defense attorney worth
their you know, worth their weight, is going to be
questioning this imagery that's put up and they'll ask questions.
They'll say, well, you know, our defendant here was just
trying to do their job at the hospital as an
obg y N. Now you've hired this person that's going
(40:37):
to display this for the whole world. It's a mockery,
you know, and now our client can't be treated fairly
by the courts. You see how this works, and so
your inability to be able to control your actions relative
to social media and what's going to happen, you know.
I hope, I hope, against hope that there is some
(41:01):
you can never replace a child period and as you
as we always say on the show, there's no such
thing as closure. But I hope that the reward that
is going to drop into the lap of this family.
And I'm not talking about just monetarily, but receiving some
(41:23):
kind of satisfaction from the courts is going to go
at least some small way in trying to heal them
in some level so that maybe they'll be brave enough
to have another child at some point in time. But
I gotta tell you, brother, if this was me, it
would put me so off of wanting to bring new
life into this world. By this experience, yeah, I would
(41:47):
really question my reality.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Man.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
They did sue everybody involved, including doctor Gates. Now, the
reason we're doing the show update today is because the
trial the jury has made an announcement about the lawsuit
about what doctor Gates did. He's the one that did
the autopsy and put the stuff on social media. I
want to read you the jury's ruling. The jury find
(42:10):
that for intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy
through intrusion into private affairs, and fraud, defendant Jackson Lgates, MD,
and Gates Rapid Diagnostic Laboratory of Atlanta, doing business as
Medical Diagnostic Choices will pay two million dollars in compensatory
(42:31):
damages to Jessica Ross and Trevion Isaiah Taylor Senior. That
was the jury's ruling. The jury also awarded an additional
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars impunitive damages. That's the
maximum amount allowed, so two and a quarter million. That
will be paid, hopefully without argument, by the insurance company
(42:52):
that doctor Gates has. I'm sure he has one. They
start with that.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Now.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
I want to be clear on this because this is
not over. This is just doctor Gates putting the video,
which that's you know what, Joe, I cannot imagine the
You can get past a lot of things, you know.
You can look at it and go they did they
may you know, even if I believe they were wrong
and what happened was a bad outcome and they deserve
(43:21):
to you can get past that by saying they didn't
intentionally kill my child. That wasn't their game plan. They
weren't trying to kill this baby. The baby died by
their actions, but that wasn't their intent. You could get
by that at some point, maybe, but you can never
get past the fact that an adult doctor that you're
(43:42):
paying to give you the truth about what happened to
your child violated your trust. Emotional damage of putting your
baby up for all the world to see something so private,
something so painful. They'll never get a that there's no closure.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
And you know, you know what they say the Internet,
it lives forever. It lives forever. So whoever was out
there that happened to see this before it was taken down,
they've got video captures of this now, Dave, I guarantee
you as sure as the sun is going to rise
in the east tomorrow morning, I guarantee you that those
(44:23):
images are floating around out there. What you know, who
does the family see about that? Who do they see
about it? Please tell me? And I I'm you know,
I don't mean you to give me an answer for that.
But who do you go and complain to about that?
There is nobody you can complain to about that. This
is a you know, I would like to call this
(44:44):
a series of unfortunate instances in their life, But Dave,
some of this stuff, all the way from the birth
to the post wartem circumstances, there is and certainly with
the delivery. I don't think that their specific content there,
but there are decisions that could have been made that
(45:07):
would have had a better outcome than what we're seeing
right now, because I got to tell you, David, there
is not enough money in this old world to heal
the broken hearts of these parents. May rest in peace.
(45:29):
I'm Joseph Scotten Morgan and this is body Backs
Quality diarist, but Joseph's gotten more. I want to say
something to you today, and I want you to hear
me right and understand. In my opinion, and this comes
from both professional and personal experience, I wager that there
(00:22):
is no darker place, particularly for a parent, to be
in than when it comes to the loss of a child.
You're looking for rock bottom.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
You're here.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
It seems like nothing else in the world matters. It's
as if a part of you has died as well,
and it has. I want to revisit a case that
that we've talked about previously on Bodybacks, and the reason
(01:07):
I want to talk about this today is that there
have been developments. There have been developments in the case
involving a tiny little life, a life that died in
the midst of childbirth and the horror that followed that event.
(01:35):
What I'm talking about is the early premature death of
a little one named Tree Beyond Isaiah Taylor Jr. Otherwise
known as Baby Isaiah. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this
(01:56):
is Bodybacks day. Back when we initially covered Baby Isaiah's death.
I remember following following that episode, I felt a sudden
need to go take a shower, and I needed to
(02:20):
scrub my brain because I couldn't believe some of the
things that we were hearing that were coming out of well,
let's face at the south side of Atlanta, down in
Clayton County where this baby had died at Southern Regional Hospital.
That story in and of itself is horrific, but what
(02:42):
happened afterwards and trying to understand what brought about this
little angel's death, It's like it you see something that
is bad and then you think it can't get any
worse than all of a sudden it does.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
It got worse.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Did this first episode about baby Isaiah dying at birth,
and we we will recover this again for those who
haven't heard the story yet. But you know, I didn't
really go into a personal side of this that much.
And I when my daughter Hannah was born, she was stuck.
(03:25):
She was not getting over a part. Now Loadonna had
had a child previously by C section, and she wanted
to have Hannah vaginally, a vaginal delivery, and everything was fine,
but her head was not. She was getting stuck. She
was not getting over a hump in there that was
(03:46):
keeping her from and the doctor was not operating as
quickly as the nurse who was standing there with me
thought he should be. But she's a nurse. I'm the dad,
this is my wife, and you're the doctor. I don't
like what he was doing either, but the bottom line
is I realized then how out of control I was.
(04:08):
I'm not in I cannot do anything to help, and
thankfully this nurse when the doctor turned, she said, Dave,
grab her head and push it up into her belly
as hard as you can, and that's how we got
Hannah out. He'd brought up forceps and actually did cut her,
(04:28):
which I know there's a necessity to them, but please, God,
love you don't do that. Yeah, but because it does
leave damage that stays for a lifetime and it can
be really bad.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
We didn't experience that part, but.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, I had a friend of mind that during his
birth he wound up having a His eye was compromised
in birth as a result of them the manipulation that
went on, and his eye was always as some people
might call it a lazy eye.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Drooping, but there was still visible Structurally, you could tell
that there was something that was off, and a lot
of it has to do with how malleable the skull is,
I think, but that malleability can sometimes lead to I
think maybe some practitioners thinking that the body is more
(05:26):
resilient sometimes than it actually is. And you know, in
the case of Isaiah, well.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
When we heard about how that what happened though, Joe,
in that case, the nurses were talking about the pressure
that came to bear and the section that this doctor Houston,
we probably need to go over that a little bit
because whereas I was present when things were happening with
Lodonna and Hannah, and I realized then again how difficult
(05:53):
this is. We take it for granted. We take so
many things in our life today for granted. Childbirth cannot
be taken granted. It's a moment where the new life,
the life of your partner, everybody is at risk. There's
a lot of risk going on at childbirth, and I'm
so thankful that we have in this country such a
(06:13):
great record for having children. But you know what, the
story of baby Isaiah and the cover up that took
place after it, Yeah, tells you that things are not
what they seem sometimes and you better trust, you better
study up before you go to have a baby. Know
what a normal delivery time is, know how long a
woman should be in labor before you push for something else.
(06:36):
Because apparently this doctor didn't have a clue. It boggles
my mind.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Joe, Yeah, it does mine as well. And that you
you know, you have to you know, you have to
look at their track record. That's why. You know. The
thing about it is, I think in America we're so
prone to well, this person has MD after their name,
and they have these board certifications. Obviously they know what
(07:02):
they're doing. And they wouldn't put you know, my unborn
child soon to be born at risk, and wouldn't put
and I'm speaking as a husband now, I wouldn't put
my wife's life at risk because they've been trained to
do these sort of things. And when you know, we
begin to discuss this and talk about the horror that
(07:23):
was involved and what was and I'll say it, I'll
say it right here, what was perpetrated upon this very
young couple day where they didn't they didn't know any better.
I mean, you remember when you were a young parent.
I remember when you know, I didn't have my first
child until I was a little bit older. You know,
It's not like I was a nineteen year old kid.
(07:46):
But still you lean into the idea that they're so
well trained and that they're so highly educated and that
they're going to help you. You can't see this kind
of catashee happening particularly to you, you know, and the
ones that you love, and then insult to injury, drag
(08:10):
everybody into this idea that we're going to present these
circumstances as if it's just the child died. The child died.
There was nothing we could.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Do and nothing we did to heart to cause it
and nothing.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah, we cannot you know, we're not responsible for this.
But David, I gotta tell you, man, the physical evidence
here bears out something a bit different, now, doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Oh buddy, we know it started July ninth of twenty
twenty three, two years coming up on the two year anniversary.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Wow, this baby would be a little toddler right now.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
And Tevion and Isaiah Taylor Sr. And Jessica Ross expecting
the child. They go through everything that she goes through,
the prenatal care. They do everything they're supposed to do.
She goes into labor ninth and during the vaginal birth,
the baby's the baby boy's shoulders got stuck. Now, you
(09:07):
know a lot more about biology and how the body
works than I do, but a shoulder getting stuck during
birth doesn't seem like it would be something unheard of,
something that can't be overcome in this day and age
that you know, something's obviously not right here.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, And so most of the time in these deliveries,
there are multiple ways that you can kind of spur
things on. I think one of the things that that
kind of comes to mind first. Then these these are
not necessarily applicable in every one of the circumstances. But
some things we just kind of naturally think about is like, well,
(09:49):
an episiotomy if you've ever heard that term, if you
think of if you think of the vaginal opening as
a clock face at six o'clock position, there will be
an ensue made, and that's to accommodate the size of
the child in order to facilitate because there's this critical point.
(10:10):
I think that when practitioners get to where they have
to make a decision if if we're going to do
a C section, we need to do it now before
it gets to this point. And that's you know, that's
the rub here. But you know, there's suction that's available,
there's various rotations of the child's body that can take place.
(10:34):
That's one of the things that doctors will do, and
the nurses, the midwives that go in and they can
turn turn the baby in order to facilitate this. And
it takes, you know, you have to have a great
scientific mind to be an effective practitioner, but it takes
a bit of finesse too, that comes along with just
(10:54):
experience and these sorts of things, and every every person
is different and how they're going to respond because not
everybody's body is the same.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Man. You know, I'm so glad you said that, Joe,
because as I was sitting here thinking about this, you know,
of my children didn't have had a little bit of
problem with Andrew, but no problems with Tyler. Haley was
a c section, but then Hannah that that was the
only problem I had encountered with the child being born.
And I'm still remembering that moment, and that's why this
(11:27):
really has hit home for me. It really has because
I made some decisions for my wife that I had
to make that I wasn't prepared to make, you know,
just in case. But I also look at this now
and realize that this child they tried to suction, they
tried to use traction to pull this baby. Yeah, his
(11:48):
shoulders are stuck. He's not coming out. And this woman,
this poor woman is in labor for hours, Joe, for
hours and hours, and the baby gets stuck. At eight
forty pm. They know the time the baby gets stuck.
Eight forty pm. That's when the trauma begins. They meaning
the nurses and everything're like, we need to do an
(12:09):
emergency C section. Doctor didn't do it. Kept pulling, kept pulling,
kept using suction, was using traction rather, what is traction
on the head of a baby?
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Well, would this methodology that you're referring to. They can
brace the head in a particular way so that they
can apply leverage into vaginal opening and literally pull. I
think that a lot of people think, you know, automatically,
when you think about traction, Okay, the first thing you
(12:48):
think about is when you're treating an adult that has
like a neck injury.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, That's what I'm thinking about.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, and you set up in traction in order to
elongate the spine. And that's generally from a manipulative standpoint,
And I mean that in the sense of manipulation of
spine and the musculatory of destructure and everything. A matter
of fact, one of the medical examiners I used to
work with, he's passed on now. He had he had
(13:16):
he suffered from gyon Bret syndrome, and he had all
kinds of muscle issues and those sorts of things. And
he would put himself in traction in his office every day,
and his doctor had urged him to do this, and
he would counterweight it with bags of water. And I'll
(13:36):
never forget this contraption has set up on his sofa
and it would literally elongate or pull his head. And
I never could understand the ration. And I was I
didn't have deep conversations with this man. He was very,
very formal person. I just saw it in there and
I asked him one time, what is that And he says,
that's traction for my gym beret. And I'm thinking, hmm,
(13:58):
that's interesting. I didn't know you need attraction for gambret.
But whatever. But you're talking about when you apply when
you apply this kind of force to a baby that's
not even born yet. Okay, we always think about how
(14:20):
resilient little kids are, you know, they can take certain
types of force and trauma that we as adults can't.
But that tissue is so very fragile, Dave, and all
it takes is this kind of force being exerted over
a protracted period of time, which is what happened. And Dave,
I got to tell you for our listeners that don't know,
(14:45):
she applied so much for us for such a long
period of time that she actually wound up to capitate
this child. Do you remember, Dave, I know I do vividly.
(15:20):
When your newborn is swaddled for the first time and
they hand that child to you. First off, you have
this feeling that you're insufficient to the task, even though
people have been doing this for thousands of thousands of years.
You think you're the one person in all of human
history that's not going to be able to do this.
(15:41):
And it's a real fear. It's a real fear, particularly
I think for men in particularly because we can be
really clumsy.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
And sometimes I was going to drop Andrew, that was
my biggest football or big he was. He was almost
ten pounds and he's huge, and it was like I
kept thinking, if I drop him, what happens? You know
exactly Why couldn't I get that out of my head?
Speaker 1 (16:04):
And it's not terrified and it's terrifil I'm just putting
them in the car to bring them home. It was
for me, you know. But the joy that is kind
of it's one of those moments. It's a spiritual moment.
I would say. My wife always says that when her
children have been born, she knows that God was present
(16:25):
in the room. That's what she's always said. And when
that child is handed over to you and you embrace
that child, I get chills just speaking about it right now,
that precious moment does And Dave, it's my understanding if
and I might be misremembering, but it's it is true
that they were not allowed to hold this baby immediately, no,
(16:48):
and that that's where this thing kind of really goes
off the rails.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Here.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
You're right, it goes off the wheels fairly early on.
But here's the deception, and here's the Okay, she's in
labor for a number of hours, the shoulders are stuck,
and they say, okay, we're going to have to do
an emergency sea section. So hours after labor begins, they
wheel her upstairs to do this emergency sea section. As
(17:15):
Joe told you just a minute ago, the baby was decapitated.
They actually pulled the baby's trunk or the body without
the head by sea section, yep, and had her. She
had to give birth to the baby's head. Yeah, Now
(17:38):
they didn't. The parents don't know what's going on. They
don't have a clue because these are kids. Yeah they're
young in my mind. Yeah, well yeah and they are,
but you know what, they don't know what to expect. Look,
the doctor's there, they're doing a C section. You don't
know what all's going on, because you know, you know
what you're told. And so as they're doing these things
(17:59):
and they get the they then take the baby. The
parents don't know the baby is decapitated. Now they are
told the baby didn't live. And the nurses or the staff,
I'm gonna say staff. I don't want to impugne anybody.
I don't know who did this. I don't know, but
I know that this couple wanted to hold their baby,
(18:22):
dead or not. We want to hold our baby. That's
our baby. We've already got a name for this baby.
It's Trevian Isaiah. You know this is myr son. I'm
gonna and so the staff then wrapped this baby's body
and head in such a way that they placed the
head on top of the body and wrapped it like
(18:46):
you would swaddow a baby, but wrapped it tighter around
the head so they could pass it off as a
natural death at birth, that there was nothing wrong, just
the baby died at birth.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Now I go back to my.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Fear of holding you know, my son Andrew when he
was born, and I'm thinking they were probably the same way,
even though they know the baby is dead, but they're
thinking the baby's still born. You know that they're thinking
something along those lines has transpired. They're grieving, they're exhausted,
their panic, they're all the horrible things that you must
go through at that moment I cannot imagine. And they're
(19:24):
handed this baby as if there's no more damage to
look at. They were lied to, They were cheated and
lied to by everybody involved. How do you hold a
baby's head onto.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
How do you know? How do you fix the body
to the point where you feel comfortable enough as a clinician,
and clinician is very broad term to mean anybody who
had a hand in this. You feel comfortable enough to
hand the deep, decay appetated body of an infant. But
(20:03):
yet the head has been placed and secured quote unquote
in a manner in which you feel secure enough that
the head I hate say this, is not going to
roll off and wind up in the floor or wind
up in mom's lap. Because I got to tell you, you know,
when my child was born, my children have been born,
(20:25):
I don't go to their toes to kiss their toes.
I'm kissing all over that forehead. When my son Isaac died,
I was holding him when he passed, and I kiss
that baby all over his face, you know. And it's
one of those things I'm telling you. It's one of
those things as parent that you it's almost like it's
(20:49):
confirmatory to me it is all right, being the father
of a child that passed away. I think that it's
just that touch you want to confirm that a child
has passed on, you know, and just opposite, I mean,
when a child is alive, you want to feel that
warmth that transfers from their body to your lips as
(21:09):
you're touching your lips to them. But Dave, if it
kind of a hero appears in all of this, because
if it had not been for the funeral home. In
this case, my friend, the family would have been none
the wiser. Can you imagine being a funeral director, you know,
(21:34):
after the family has called you and said, look, we
want to honor our child, have a service for the child,
and yes, and let me tell you how this works
in case folks are not aware. When someone passed away
to the hospital, it can be a baby or an adult.
They will fill out an entire death packet at the
(21:54):
hospital and when it's generally a social worker comes and
talks to the family to say what funeral home do
you want? Want to handle this? And the social worker
many times will reach out, you know, to the funeral home.
Of course, families reaching out at the same time too,
and then they will arrange for the body to be
picked up. Here's something that folks don't know. When babies die,
(22:18):
they pass away in the hospital. Did you know that
we have a little funeral homes in particularly have these
They have these little open boxes. I guess they're probably
about three feet now, it's probably not that, about two
feet by a foot and they're hinged and they have
a handle right in the center of it, and it
(22:38):
looks like a miniature casket almost, And what they will
do is they'll walk in to the morgue and they'll
open they'll open the top of this box and they
place the baby in the box. They cover the baby
in the sheet, and they transport the baby and no
one really knows what they have in the box. Okay,
it's not like they walk in with a stretcher. They'll
just walk right back out, getting the funeral home vehicle
(23:00):
and off they go to the funeral home to preped body.
First time I ever saw one of those things, it was,
you know, I've seen a lot of ghastly things that
kind of center like a night gallery, you know, Rod's
Serling night Gallery. Kind of shiver up my spine because
it's got this kind of creepy old feel to it.
When you see these boxes, and they used to always
(23:21):
have these. But when the funeral home came to pick
up this child's body, I can only imagine that the
people in the hospital that we're thinking about this, they
were thinking, how in the world are we going to
explain this? Because now that body's out of our control.
That body's out of our control, you know what. That's
(23:42):
that's no different day than these cases that we have taught,
and we've had this discussion brother, where we've talked about
how perpetrators that kill individuals sometimes they will bury them
at their own home. They will retain the body so
that they always can guarantee that they have total and
complete control all over the body. And for me, that
(24:02):
pops in my mind with this where they're thinking, oh,
my lord, you know, once once that threshold is called
is crossed, we no longer have control over these remains.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
That's exactly what happened. You know.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
It was kind of interesting here because I've approached this
having experienced something now that I'm much more familiar with
the process of death at a hospital, And I look
at this young couple. They expected to go into the
hospital as too and come out with a family of
(24:34):
three and beginning their life together. And now they're faced
with all of these very fast decisions that have to
be made because and they're pushed on it. They want
to answers, they want to know what happened. They're told
by the hospital that they don't have a right to
a free autopsy. You know, they want to know what happened,
(24:54):
you know, why did my baby die? Why is my
son not going home with me, and the hospital is like, Noah,
you don't.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
You don't have a right to know. I mean, yeah,
you can pay for it if you want to pay
to have it done.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
You have done. But just baby died. Babies died during birth.
It happened. Sorry, sorry, And so they're kind of bum
rushed out of the place now as this baby was
taken to the nursing the funeral home. And I'm so
glad you mentioned the heroic nature of this because had
it not been for the funeral home, nobody would have known.
(25:26):
The cover up would have been easy. And I'm gonna
be honest with you, I wonder how many times things
are done, you know, with a phone call and a
couple thousand dollars to somebody. Think about it, they could
have done a number of things that we and we
would have never known about this, but they were they
were told they had to pay for their own autopsy,
(25:47):
and after and then after they found out from the
nursing home that what had actually happened, you know, that
there was a decapitation. And that's where I was wondering
from your standpoint, from the what happens when look, I
get it, that baby dies naturally they're a still birth
something like that.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
That's a.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
That I don't I mean, as as horrible as that
would be, that would have to be seen as different
than a baby that is decapitated, right, it.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Would, it would. And I got to tell you with
a this is the interesting thing with and this would
be and the way the way clinicians will frame this,
and it's always made my teeth hurt every time I
hear this term. They would use the term medical misadventure,
(26:39):
and they throw that term around a lot. Well, it's
a medical misadventure. Oh well, you know, that's just the
way things are. Medical misadventure, medical misadventure. And I've worked
cases day with quote unquote medical misadventure where there was
(27:00):
where there's there was such shoddy work that was done
that it would be it would equate two for a
civilian in a civilian world outside And when I say civilian,
I mean when not talking about military, I'm talking about
an average an average person outside of the clinical environment.
You'd be charged with manslaughter at a baseline, right, Okay,
(27:24):
But yet they'll use that term medical misadventure many times.
And I can tell you that's probably how you know,
that's what they're thinking perhaps in this particular case, and yeah,
they had to. And well, let me educate you about
one more thing. I feel. I feel like I'm preaching
right now.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
No questions I have about this.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Well, listen, if a child dies, there are so many.
First off, you want to know why did they die?
Because if the parents which we know this parent, these
parents had had gone through all of their prenatal meetings. Okay,
they've been being followed all these sorts of things, and
the days arriving, you know, they're all excited.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
For all.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I know, they went through Lama's classes together. I have
no idea, but you have to be able to give
a scientific reason why this child died. I think in
most cases, even with still bursts, that as part and
parcel of the service that the hospital provides for, you know,
(28:33):
a birth. If the child dies, it's pretty standard for
them to do a hospital autopsy. Okay, you know it
truly is. And this idea that no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
you're not. But back to the medical misadventure, Dave, this
is actually a case that's reportable to the corner, right,
That's what I was thinking, asking, Yeah, yeah, it is.
(28:56):
And most of the time, still bursts were reportable to
the corner Medical Examiner. Most of them are. I mean,
I can't tell you how many still birth cases I've
taken report of over the phone. Now, I wouldn't go
to the hospital to I wouldn't go to the hospital
to examine a stillborn child, but it would still be
reportable to us. We'd write a report of okay, And
(29:16):
sometimes a baby would have a name. Sometimes a baby
would not have a name. It's a weird kind of
thing that happens. And when you think about this, this
ain't a still birth. This is not how you would
define a still birth. Okay. Now, if you've ever been
(29:37):
in a laboring delivery suite, you know that you know
there's monitors everywhere. Oh yeah, monitor the baby's heartbeat, all
that sort of stuff. And this is I think what's
the big mystery right now is to know if they
had that fetal heart monitor going at that point in
tom And this will be a question that will come up,
(30:01):
at what point in time did that child to rest?
Because this is not a still birth. This is not
some kind of genetic thing that's going on where you
know the child is not going to be viable and
they die maybe in utero, which happens many times, and
the mother has to deliver. Those are very sad. That
is a classic still birth. This ain't no still birth, brother,
(30:25):
You're talking about a baby who's had his head removed
during delivery.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
This is a traumatic death.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Years ago, when I was working down in New Orleans,
I was working as a path assistant and as a
corner investigator and was working with this one physician and
he was rather in circles of forensic pathology. He was
(31:13):
nationally well known, and I never could understand why he
was working at our office. It's not that our office
was a bad place, it's the level of renown that
this individual had experienced prior to arrival at our office
(31:34):
was pretty significant. They had been a deputy Chief medical
Examiner in a major US city at one point in time,
but yet they landed at our office. So you always
have questions about that sort of thing. As it turned out,
this individual had made a stop in between their deputy
(31:58):
chief Medical Examiner position and our position in New Orleans.
They had stopped off at another office, and while at
that office, this forensic pathologist was tasked with trying to
understand could a baby sustain a fracture at a certain
(32:21):
age when falling from a certain height. The forensic pathologists
took it upon themselves to begin to conduct experiments, and
as a result of those experiments, a baby or baby's
(32:42):
were dropped from a variety of heights. And it just
so happened that this was witnessed by staff member who
reported them. When I found that out that this individual
had been involved in the so called experiments, I couldn't
(33:05):
believe that I was standing at the same table with
this individual doing post mortem examinations with them, because they
did wind up getting sued, they did wind up being
found liable, and the university that they were associated with
was sued as well. You know, it had only been
(33:27):
I guess at that time that was in the eighties,
It had only been I don't know, probably at that
time less than forty years earlier, when a group of
people were doing experiments on another group of people. It's
something that's so incredibly abhorrent and it runs contrary to
(33:49):
every single ideal that we hold up in the medical
legal community. And Dave, I got to tell you, brother,
if you thought the story the decapitation when it comes
to basic baby Isaiah is bad. This is what we meant.
It went from bad to worse, and now we have
(34:10):
new news that has burst on the horizon relative to
all of this.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
As you know, they did file lawsuits. You know, in
this day and age, you're not going to get by
without somebody standing in the gap and saying something is
wrong here, and we're going to help you take care
of this. And that's what they did. Thankfully, somebody did
help parents provide well. They sued just about everybody involved.
(34:38):
But one thing they did, Joe, they got their own
autopsy done. Remember how I told you to the hospital
said they weren't entitled to a free autopsy. That was
the hospital's way of bullying them.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
I think it was.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
I concur with your assessment, brother, But.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
They got an autopsy, they found it. And to be clear,
I asked you about this earlier during the review show
because I didn't know you could pay for an autopsy,
Like I mean, I didn't really think about it because
I would just assume that if a body needs an autopsy,
it gets done, not that you actually have to fight
(35:15):
to have an autopsy done on your child. And that's
what they did. They paid to have it done. They
found a doctor, they would do it. Now, that was
the good news. The bad news is well again, remember
that this family did not hear from the doctor, the nurses,
or anybody at the hospital what had happened to their baby.
They didn't find that out. They found it out from
(35:37):
the nursing home, I mean not in the funeral home. So,
realizing that they were lied to, they went and hired
doctor Jackson Gates to perform an autopsy. Doctor Jackson Gates
does an autopsy and then, in a violation of every
(36:00):
thing I can imagine. I cannot think of one redeeming
thing to say about what he did with a videotape
of the autopsy.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
You know, for years, this is okay, Just so that
we're clear on this. For years, I've had people that
would come to me and they would they would beg
to be able to attend an autopsy, just people that
are curious. I've got tons of medical student, nursing students,
(36:38):
and of course cops. Because autopsies are not something that
you normally get access to. First off, you have no
way of vetting the person that's going to come through
the door. You don't know who's going to show or
what they're what their true reason is. And nowadays, in particular,
you never know what the reason is. You know what
I mean. You can't do anything in public without somebody
(37:01):
having a camera and their videotape. You could just be
having a regular everyday discussion with somebody and something that
you say can be taken out of context. Well, I
got to tell you, it might wind up on social media.
And Dave, again, we have an example of somebody, a pathologist,
(37:24):
who felt like that it was a good idea to
do the post warnum examination on this precious child and
then display the body in an Instagram reel, an Instagram reel, Dave, Yeah,
(37:52):
pictures and video of this child's macerated body and display
so it's like.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
And by the way, without the permission of the parents.
Now I could see if and I can't imagine a
parent doing this. But let's just say for the sake
of argument, that doctor Gates went to them and said, look,
there's some educational value. I would like to share some
of this autoposy with whoever, other professionals, whatever.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
There might be some value in that.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
I don't know what it would be, but doctor Jackson
Gates doesn't bother to ask them permission to do anything.
He posts them on Instagram for all the world to see,
and that's how they found out about it.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
It wasn't like they.
Speaker 3 (38:39):
Called for permission, Joe. Somebody saw it and said, hey,
what is this?
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Well, you ought to have the good sense to understand
first off, that it doesn't You don't have to be
a board certified forensic pathologist to appreciate this. This is
going to blind up in a lawsuit. And I'm not
talking about the Instagram thing, which obviously does. However, the
death of this baby at this hospital is going to
(39:06):
wind up in litigation. In what universe have you decided
that this is a good idea that I should take
imagery of this baby and display it for the entire world.
Particularly that's bad enough, but particularly understanding the fact that
(39:27):
this is going.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
To go to court.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Okay, it's going to go to court. I can you know,
dollars to donuts, I bet you that it's going to
go to court, which it's going to and you're going
to You've so not only not only are you compromising
the not only are these poor parents being subjected to
this Emotionally, what happened to their baby? What they eventually
(39:52):
found out with the decapitation during birth. And not only
are you humiliating them further because this is the ultimate
and humiliation by displaying the desecrated remains of their baby,
now you're putting them at risk for what's going to
happen in the courts later on, you know, by displaying
(40:15):
the images. You know, because any any defense attorney worth
their you know, worth their weight, is going to be
questioning this imagery that's put up and they'll ask questions.
They'll say, well, you know, our defendant here was just
trying to do their job at the hospital as an
obg y N. Now you've hired this person that's going
(40:37):
to display this for the whole world. It's a mockery,
you know, and now our client can't be treated fairly
by the courts. You see how this works, and so
your inability to be able to control your actions relative
to social media and what's going to happen, you know.
I hope, I hope, against hope that there is some
(41:01):
you can never replace a child period and as you
as we always say on the show, there's no such
thing as closure. But I hope that the reward that
is going to drop into the lap of this family.
And I'm not talking about just monetarily, but receiving some
(41:23):
kind of satisfaction from the courts is going to go
at least some small way in trying to heal them
in some level so that maybe they'll be brave enough
to have another child at some point in time. But
I gotta tell you, brother, if this was me, it
would put me so off of wanting to bring new
life into this world. By this experience, yeah, I would
(41:47):
really question my reality.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Man.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
They did sue everybody involved, including doctor Gates. Now, the
reason we're doing the show update today is because the
trial the jury has made an announcement about the lawsuit
about what doctor Gates did. He's the one that did
the autopsy and put the stuff on social media. I
want to read you the jury's ruling. The jury find
(42:10):
that for intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy
through intrusion into private affairs, and fraud, defendant Jackson Lgates, MD,
and Gates Rapid Diagnostic Laboratory of Atlanta, doing business as
Medical Diagnostic Choices will pay two million dollars in compensatory
(42:31):
damages to Jessica Ross and Trevion Isaiah Taylor Senior. That
was the jury's ruling. The jury also awarded an additional
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars impunitive damages. That's the
maximum amount allowed, so two and a quarter million. That
will be paid, hopefully without argument, by the insurance company
(42:52):
that doctor Gates has. I'm sure he has one. They
start with that.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Now.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
I want to be clear on this because this is
not over. This is just doctor Gates putting the video,
which that's you know what, Joe, I cannot imagine the
You can get past a lot of things, you know.
You can look at it and go they did they
may you know, even if I believe they were wrong
and what happened was a bad outcome and they deserve
(43:21):
to you can get past that by saying they didn't
intentionally kill my child. That wasn't their game plan. They
weren't trying to kill this baby. The baby died by
their actions, but that wasn't their intent. You could get
by that at some point, maybe, but you can never
get past the fact that an adult doctor that you're
(43:42):
paying to give you the truth about what happened to
your child violated your trust. Emotional damage of putting your
baby up for all the world to see something so private,
something so painful. They'll never get a that there's no closure.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
And you know, you know what they say the Internet,
it lives forever. It lives forever. So whoever was out
there that happened to see this before it was taken down,
they've got video captures of this now, Dave, I guarantee
you as sure as the sun is going to rise
in the east tomorrow morning, I guarantee you that those
(44:23):
images are floating around out there. What you know, who
does the family see about that? Who do they see
about it? Please tell me? And I I'm you know,
I don't mean you to give me an answer for that.
But who do you go and complain to about that?
There is nobody you can complain to about that. This
is a you know, I would like to call this
(44:44):
a series of unfortunate instances in their life, But Dave,
some of this stuff, all the way from the birth
to the post wartem circumstances, there is and certainly with
the delivery. I don't think that their specific content there,
but there are decisions that could have been made that
(45:07):
would have had a better outcome than what we're seeing
right now, because I got to tell you, David, there
is not enough money in this old world to heal
the broken hearts of these parents. May rest in peace.
(45:29):
I'm Joseph Scotten Morgan and this is body Backs
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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