Experts clash on cause of Willowbrook toddler's death
Did 2-year-old Steven Quinn Jr.'s death result from a beating or an unfortunate series of misdiagnoses involving a potentially fatal disease?
Multiple expert witnesses this week have provided different opinions in a hearing in DuPage County to decide whether Randy Liebich - the man serving a 65-year sentence for Steven's murder in 2002 - gets a new trial.
The former Cook County assistant medical examiner, Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan, who performed the autopsy, said Steven died of multiple injuries due to blunt-force trauma to his head and abdomen.
But a second forensic pathologist testified that the cause of death was undetermined.
On Thursday, a third expert, Dr. Michael Laposata, chairman and director of the University of Texas Medical Branch's Pathology Department, said he is "absolutely certain" Steven died of natural causes that were misdiagnosed.
Laposata, who reviewed the boy's medical records but not testimony from Liebich's 2004 bench trial, said it was immediately apparent when the boy was checked into Mt. Sinai Hospital on Feb. 8, 2002, that he already was suffering from "excruciatingly painful" pancreatitis.
Records, he said, showed a hole in the boy's intestines that caused fecal matter to spray onto the pancreas and liver and likely other organs, causing a condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation that affects the blood's ability to clot. The DIC, he said, could have been responsible for the blood found on the boy's brain.
"All of the supportive evidence tells you that's what happened," Laposata said.
Prosecutors maintain Liebich does not deserve a new trial and was accurately convicted of beating his girlfriend's young son while caring for him in the couple's Willowbrook apartment while the mom was at work. The boy died three days later.
At his trial, Liebich's attorneys argued Steven's mother was physically abusive to the boy and any injuries were caused before Feb. 8, when she took him to the hospital.
Laposata said he did not see any physical evidence that would suggest Steven was abused. He said he is not sure what caused the puncture in Steven's intestines, but the boy had to have been ill for "days or even weeks" prior to being admitted to the hospital.
"Pancreatitis is an event that can lead to an acute explosion over time," Laposata said. "But pancreatitis, itself, cannot be acute."
It could take hours or days of fecal matter leaking onto the pancreas, he said, before the pancreas would begin shedding cells and alerting the body it was in danger.
The Second District Appellate Court ordered the hearing in March 2016 to determine whether Liebich, now 39, should be granted a new trial on the basis of "ineffective assistance of counsel." He is now represented by the University of Chicago Law School's Exoneration Project.
In its 2016 ruling, the appellate court found former assistant public defenders Ricky Holman and John Casey failed to adequately investigate alternate scientific explanations that could have explained the boy's internal brain and abdominal wounds and, ultimately, his death.
Testimony is next scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday and again on Aug. 16 before Judge John Kinsella is expected to rule.