The following information is verbatim from court proceedings in Case No. HC13707.

Ken Marsh has maintained his innocence his story has never changed. He has repeated it over and over again during several parole hearings. The state prison psychologist, Dr. Terrini believes he is innocent.

Phillip's family has always maintained he was very ill and that his illness was not properly diagnosed. They all support review of his case. Phillip's mother has begged every public official excluding the President to look at his case and the medical records.

The murder investigation was turned over by the police to the District Attorney's Office with an accidental death opinion. Detective Armijo, in charge of the San Diego Police Department Homicide 3 Team has provided a declaration to the court. He believes that Ken Marsh is innocent.

Dr. Gregory Reiber has reviewed the medical records and Phillip's autopsy photos and report. Dr. Reiber is Director of Autopsy at UC Davis Medical School. He has personally performed approximately 5000 autopsies for coroners in this state. He has testified over 300 times, predominately as a prosecution witness. He is an expert in child death cases appearing at California Attorney General's Office training, symposiums, etc.; trauma death committees. He says Phillip's death was accidental. Phillip suffered a rotational fall with a whiplash injury when he fell from a couch onto a raised brick hearth breaking an ashtray and cutting himself during the fall.

Phillip fell at 11:00 a.m. on 4/27/83 and 9-1-1 was called. The day Phillip fell he was transported to Alvarado Hospital and then Children's Hospital. During the transport from Alvardo Hospital to Children's Hospital, the Children's Hospital resident physician gave Phillip 8 gm. of Mannitol. About 40 minutes later, Phillip's brain swelling magnified and he had Bradycardia (a slow heart beat). He was not seen by a neurologist for 2 ½ hours. This was after the Mannitol therapy.

From 1981 to 1986 the District Attorney and Coroner's Office implemented a policy allowing Children's Hospital pathologists to perform autopsies in questionable child death cases. This was a conflict of interest. Dr. Williams worked under Dr. Chadwick who oversaw the child abuse deaths. Dr. Williams was not a board certified forensic pathologist and performed an incompetent autopsy. Dr. Williams took blood and tissue samples in a criminal investigation but destroyed them without testing them.

Dr. Stern, Phillip's Kaiser pediatrician was also a member of Dr. Chadwick's child abuse council. She told the Alvarado Hospital emergency room physician that Phillip had previously had Mononucleosis and a bleeding disorder. Dr. Michael Innis, a hematologist has reviewed the medical records and has provided his declaration that Phillip was indeed extremely ill when he fell and had an existing clotting weakness induced by disease.

The day Phillip fell, Dr. Chadwick and the Children's Hospital doctors proclaimed he was murdered by Ken Marsh. From that point on, Dr. Chadwick had committee meetings discussing Phillip's death. On 5/17/83, Dr. Chadwick falsely summarized Phillip's existing medical records omitting almost all mention of Phillip's disease and coagulapathy symptoms. There was no mention of Phillip's reaction to the Mannitol given to him by the Children's Hospital resident physician.

On Phillip's pending death certificate, 9608, an international death classification code is handwritten on it. This code is "poisoning by other specified antibiotics" (toxic reaction categories). Dr. Thomas Schweller a neurologist and pediatrician has reviewed Phillip's medical records and the Children's Hospital transport record. He has provided his declaration that Phillip was improperly given Mannitol that exacerbated his cerebral bleed and brain swelling.

On 5/18/83, Dr. Chadwick held a meeting that Dr. Williams, Dr. Stern and District Attorney Jay Coulter attended presenting his false summary of Phillip's medical records.

The following day, on 5/19/83, Dr. Chadwick, Dr. Williams, Dr. Stern and Dr. Lohner met discussing Phillip's case. Dr. Williams then issued his written autopsy report the same day.

On 6/30/83, Ken Marsh was charged with Phillip's murder. The District Attorney began prosecuting Marsh without an official cause of death and investigation report. Phillip's final death certificate was issued almost three months after his death on 7/21/83. The coroner's report, ruling Phillip's death a homicide was issued on 7/25/83.

District Attorney Coulter knew that the police investigation concluded that Phillip's death was accidental but prosecuted Ken Marsh under a policy to prosecute cases at the urging of Dr. Chadwick. In a subsequent newspaper article, Children's Hospital Links to Coroner's Office Questioned (Aug. 19, 1985) Weintraub Los Angeles Times, D.A. Coulter was quoted as stating that he had ". . .nothing but complete trust in the honesty and integrity" of the Children's Hospital pathologists. He further stated:

I'd rather be in a community where doctors are going to pound on my door and say Dammit, get up and prosecute this sucker, rather than what might exist in other communities where a case turns up and the prosecutor goes from doctor to doctor and they all say, "Gee, I'd like to help but I'm real busy" or "The facts in this case aren't clear.". . .

The entire process, including having Phillip's autopsy performed by a doctor who was not a forensic pathologist to prosecuting Ken Marsh before an official cause of death was highly irregular. At the time, there were other forensic pathologists who could have performed Phillip's autopsy, who were not associated with Children's Hospital. They would not have attended group consensus meetings to determine Phillip's cause of death.

Ken Marsh was represented by appointed counsel who did not adequately investigate Phillip's cause of death. This was his first child abuse murder case.

In 1985, Carol Phinney was prosecuted in the same irregular manner with false evidence. She was acquitted and found factually innocent. John and Michelle Ferraro and Linda and Harvey Thomas were also found to be wrongly accused by Dr. Chadwick of child abuse deaths.

Some national authorities have estimated that erroneous diagnoses of child abuse occurs in 5 to 10 percent of cases. (See, Critics Say Crusader sees Abuse Where There Isn't Any (Dec. 11, 1991) Dalton, San Diego Union-Tribune.)

In 1985, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors acknowledged the problems with the Coroner's Office and asked for a review by the National Association of Medical Examiners (N.A.M.E.) Dr. Boyd Stephens, who is the San Francisco Medical Examiner conducted the review. The report documents that there were four lawsuits under litigation, three directly related to autopsy issues and three claims that had not yet reached the courts alleging failure to properly perform autopsies and/or failure to properly determine cause of death.

The D.A.'s Office is in a unique position not only to prosecute criminal acts, but to guard against flawed and wrongful prosecutions. It possesses information unknown to most defense counsel and the general public. When they knew that the Children's Hospital pathologists were not forensically trained and should not have been performing autopsies in medicolegal investigations, the D.A. had a duty to examine the cases where the convictions were obtained by flawed evidence. The D.A. and Coroner's Office remained silent when they could have reviewed Ken Marsh's case. Not only was an incompetent autopsy performed, Dr. Williams falsely stated his forensic qualifications to the court and jury.

In 1995, another attorney filed a habeas petition for Ken Marsh. This was his first habeas petition ever. During the proceeding, instead of searching for the truth and impartially reviewing the medical record evidence in Marsh's case, D.A. Kiernan unethical took possession of two boxes of Marsh's attorney-client files without his consent while his prior habeas petition was pending and used evidence gained from them to protect the D.A.'s ill gotten conviction.

These are just a few of the errors very carefully detailed in Ken Marsh's extensive habeas petition.

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