On the Broward County medical examiner's staff, Dr. Nelson "botched a cause-of-death ruling." My goodness! He said an "82-year-old Sunrise woman committed suicide. The woman's husband later confessed to strangling her...." Mercy!
Our Dr. Nelson couldn't identify a strangulation victim? Called it suicide? A STRANGULATION VICTIM?!?
Hmm. This would be the one pathologist the "independent" Dr. Thogmartin DID trust to assist, after refusing to let anyone else observe the autopsy on behalf of the Schindlers. Heavens, what next! Since both men are local, Dr. Thogmartin had to know about Dr. Nelson's "clouded past," to quote the newspaper. Why would he refuse to let a famous pathologist observe, but choose a known incompetent to do the brainwork? This is weird! What sort of hanky-panky was going on??
It was Dr. Nelson who did the sample that led Dr. Thogmartin to declare that Terri was cortically blind -- a finding belied by earlier clinical tests. She had very poor vision, to be sure, but even Dr. Cranford (working for Michael) found that she was sighted and actually complimented her for it. Drs. Hammesfahr and Maxfield measured her sight at up to 18 inches, best in the range of 8-12 inches. She could see the big shiny balloons further away, when focus didn't matter.
Cortical blindness, like PVS, is a clinical diagnosis and cannot be determined post-mortem. That didn't keep every ideologue in the country from seizing Dr. Thogmartin's comment to declare that all the videotapes of Terri were false. Yes, sir, Dr. Nelson found that for them -- the way he "botched" a cause-of-death finding and declared that a murder victim had committed suicide. (The lawyers must love this guy.)
After the autopsy report was issued, Dr. Hammesfahr replied that the finding of cortical blindness was clearly wrong and had to be a "sampling error." Now we know which incompetent pathologist MADE the sampling error -- the one with a "clouded past" right there in Florida.
What was Thogmartin THINKING?
And that was a RECENT STRANGULATION VICTIM at the time. Didn't Dr. Hammesfahr say that it looked like a strangulation to him?
Apparently so.