There are days you could not have imagined you would ever see, because the events at hand are so much at odds with what you expected or believe to be right. At such times our lives seem to be arrows speeding toward targets we ourselves can’t see or know-until that target brings us up short, halted and quivering.
I have known Doctor Eugene Turner since I was a high school student in Port Angeles, Washington. I would not hesitate to call him one of the finest people I have ever met. In many ways he has been a primary model for the kind of life I would hope to lead. From our initial encounters, I have seen Turner as a person of compassion, integrity, and balance. Among the thousands who have known and respect him, who could have guessed that one day, just a few years short of retirement, Turner would stand in court to defend himself against a charge of second-degree murder?
Turner is accused of willfully ending the life of Conor McInnerney, an infant under his care. The incident took place on the evening of January 12, 1998. Conor was just three days old. He was brought to the emergency room of Olympic Memorial Hospital in Port Angeles because he had stopped breathing while nursing. The events that followed are less in dispute than how to understand Turner’s actions, intentions, and motives.
According to newspaper accounts, when paramedics arrived at the McInnerney home minutes after receiving the 911 call, they found Conor without breath or a pulse. No heartbeat could be reestablished in the twenty-minute trip to the hospital. Conor’s eyes were fixed and dilated when emergency-room treatment began. He was limp and blue in color. The ER staff inserted an IV in his arm and administered cardiac drugs. Conor’s heart began to beat after about ten minutes of this treatment, but he still could not breathe on his own. Breathing was maintained by a manual respirator. In the interim, Conor had gone without oxygen for thirty-nine minutes.
Turner, Conor’s pediatrician, took charge of the treatment about forty-five minutes after the baby arrived in the ER. Normally, an infant in this condition would be airlifted from Olympic Memorial to Children’s Hospital in Seattle. Port Angeles lacks the equipment and personnel to handle such cases. But on this evening, because of a snowstorm, no aircraft were able to leave Port Angeles. For the rest of the evening, Conor remained under Turner’s care.
For the next forty minutes, Turner, together with other members of the hospital staff, worked to reestablish Conor’s ability to breathe on his own. But Conor remained flaccid, his pupils still fixed and dilated. Turner met with the parents. He explained that even if Conor were able to recover his ability to breathe, Connor would surely have suffered massive brain damage from such prolonged oxygen deprivation. The parents decided to take Conor off the life-support system. Unable to sustain breath or a heartbeat on his own, the infant was pronounced dead at 9:54 p.m.
In the aftermath of the pronouncement of death the situation took an unexpected and fateful turn. Twenty-to-thirty minutes later a nurse noticed that Conor, who had had an irregular heartbeat, was breathing in an irregular, gasping fashion. Turner was recalled to the emergency room, arriving at about 11 p.m. The doctor understood the breathing to be "agonal breathing," a not unusual part of the dying process. Still, Turner made further efforts to restore normal breathing and a normal heartbeat. While attempting to revive Conor, the doctor expressed his reservations about recalling the parents to the hospital. How could he put them through such a thing a second time?
What Turner did next is the subject of controversy and heartache for all involved. Sometime close to midnight, Turner placed his hand over Conor’s mouth, pinching the child’s nose to stop the breathing. A nurse witnessed the act and questioned it. She heard him say, "I can’t stand it. I can’t have this go on any more."
Turner admits to this action. However, he does not consider it an act of euthanasia. In a statement issued September 1, he said: "Conor’s sporadic heartbeat and agonal respiration after he died are natural indicators of death. These types of reflexive actions can commonly occur after death. Reflexive actions can be caused by a number of factors, including strong cardio-respiratory drugs used to stimulate the heart in resuscitation efforts. But reflexive actions under these circumstances are not signs of life; they are indicators of death. In the presence of nurses, I stopped these reflexive actions. Conor was dead when I did this and, in fact, had already been dead for a long period of time. I would never block the passage of a living child. I only did this because I knew the baby was dead. No matter how many times I see a child die, it never ceases to traumatize me. It only hurts so much because I care so much. If I ever stopped caring, I would quit being a doctor. I know in my mind and in my heart that we did all that could be done for Conor McInnerney."
But there are others who do not see it this way. Prominent among them are Conor’s parents, Marty and Michelle McInnerney, who after initially accepting Turner’s explanation now feel that a final chance at life was denied their child. Others believe that Turner acted callously or even imperiously, taking God’s decision as his own.
These are the sorts of questions a jury will sort through. When is a person dead? How much leeway can we grant a doctor under pressure and uncertain circumstances? What was Turner trying to accomplish when he followed this unusual course of action?
Port Angeles is a town of 18,000 people. You would be hard-pressed to find a more respected and loved person in Port Angeles than Eugene Turner. He has practiced medicine there for twenty-eight years. Literally hundreds of people have come forward to praise the doctor’s character, his care of their children, and frequent generosity in providing free medical care.
I count myself among those admirers. My family moved to Port Angeles just before I started high school. With only my immediate family living in town, the Turners became like a second family to me, bringing me along on camping trips in the summer and ice-skating trips in the winter. From the beginning I have looked up to Turner for his kindness, for the way he raised his children, and for his dedication to his work.
But as the McInnerneys’ lawyer said at Turner’s arraignment, "This is not a popularity contest." True. It is a tragedy. An infant has died after only three days of life. A doctor of impeccable reputation faces the loss of his reputation and a possible murder conviction. And all those surrounding these good people and terrible, almost incomprehensible events know an unfathomable sadness and a shaken faith.
As I reflect on it all, I wonder how such things come to pass. I feel heartbroken for the McInnerneys. At the same time, I honestly believe that Turner did what he could to save the child. Whether he acted appropriately under the circumstances will be decided by a jury and, ultimately, by God. Turner was asked in a September 4 interview if he would take the same course of action again. He replied, "What I did was under the circumstances at the time. I probably would not do that again, not because I don’t think that’s the thing to do but because of the unbelievable amount of anxiety, angst, and emotional turmoil and financial embarrassment that has come as a result of the situation."
A lingering question for me is how God fits into all this. Without wanting to skirt questions of human failings and culpability, I am stuck on the old problem of why it is part of God’s plan for an innocent child to die and a faithful servant to undergo the trials of Job. I take seriously the Christian belief in God’s almightiness, his providence, his full involvement in our lives. The only conclusion I can draw at this time is one often offered in Scripture: that God our maker is also the God of our undoing. God has the clay in his hands. He can reshape it according to his will-or shatter the fired pot to start anew.
Turner’s present fate is one more reminder for me that God’s purposes are not open to our scrutiny. No one has seen or can see God, for he dwells in "unapproachable light" (1 Timothy 6:16). Still, I would like to know. I would like to understand how God is accomplishing good with all of this. Because, to be honest, it all looks pretty dark to me.
Doctor Turner’s trial is scheduled to begin January 25.
