Opinion ID: 1133414
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Defense counsel's eliciting testimony about semen in baby Amanda's mouth

Text: Dr. Frederick Thysell, an emergency room physician at Palmdale Hospital, testified in the prosecution's case-in-chief regarding various tests and procedures performed on baby Amanda. On cross-examination, defense counsel Adrienne Dell asked Dr. Thysell whether a particular report indicated there was no semen found. Thysell answered by explaining that the report in question, a urinalysis, mentioned that there was no sperm, semen in the urine, but it was a routine report that does not address the issue of our taking samples of the vagina and the rectum. Defense counsel then asked whether Thysell had ever obtained any contrary results, and he answered, I did not. This exchange followed: Ms. Dell: Were you ever told that there was no semen found? Dr. Thysell: I never was. Ms. Dell: Never checked into it? Dr. Thysell: We did check the following day to find out what had happened. That was not what I was told. Ms. Dell: What were you told? Dr. Thysell: I was told there was semen found. It was recovered out of the child's mouth. Defendant argues that a reasonably competent attorney would not have elicited this testimony, which defendant characterizes as prejudicial because it put before the jury the only evidence that Amanda had actually been subjected to some form of penile intrusion by her attacker. We disagree. Immediately after Dr. Thysell's statement that he was told that semen had been found in baby Amanda's mouth, defense counsel quickly established, through Dr. Thysell's testimony, that Thysell had no recollection of when or where he might have received that information and that he had made no notation in Amanda's file to indicate the recovery of semen. In addition, other evidence adduced at trial called into question the accuracy of Dr. Thysell's testimony that he had been told about semen found in the child's mouth. Dr. Joel Ament, a resident at Kaiser Sunset Hospital to which Amanda was transferred, could not recall finding any semen during his treatment of Amanda. And he had no recollection of hearing of such recovery at an earlier time. When defense counsel asked whether Dr. Ament might have told doctors at Palmdale Hospital that Kaiser doctors found semen in Amanda's mouth, he replied, anything is possible. He added that Amanda's hospital records did not indicate the presence of semen, that the practice was to include critical facts in the record, and if semen was found in her oral cavity, that would have been an important fact for the record. Similarly, pediatrician Dr. Richard Fefferman of Kaiser Sunset Hospital testified that Amanda's records did not indicate the presence of semen and that he was unaware of anyone at Kaiser telling Palmdale Hospital doctors of having found semen. And Douglas Ridolfi, a criminalist with the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department who had examined, two sets of vaginal, rectal, and oral samples taken from Amanda, did not detect any semen, sperm, or seminal fluid in any of those samples. Thus, the evidence taken as a whole would not have left the jury with the impression, that, as Dr. Thysell vaguely remembered, semen was found in baby Amanda's mouth. Moreover, defendant is wrong that Dr. Thysell's testimony in question was the only evidence of penile intrusion by her attacker. The autopsy by Dr. Eva Hauser of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office revealed injuries inside Amanda's body between the vaginal and rectal areas that were consistent with blunt force trauma by a human penis either inside the rectum or inside the vagina. Furthermore, the primary theory of the defense was not that Amanda had not been sexually assaulted, but rather that Dennis Morgan was the one responsible for the sexual assault and death of Amanda. Accordingly, we conclude that Dr. Thysell's response to a question by defense counsel that someone had told him that semen had been recovered out of the child's mouth did not affect the reliability of the jury's guilt or penalty verdicts in this case. ( Strickland v. Washington, supra, 466 U.S. 668, 686, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674; People v. Kipp, supra, 18 Cal.4th 349, 366, 75 Cal.Rptr.2d 716, 956 P.2d 1169.)