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Mitchell Delashmitt was offered a plea bargain to end his child rape and murder case because "we were tired of baby-sitting" the state's key medical witness, the McMinn County prosecutor said Thursday.
Dr. Ronald Toolsie conducted the autopsy on Angel Mae Delashmitt, whose body was found in a pond in June 2003. Based on Dr. Toolsie's work, Mr. Delashmitt was charged with raping his 14-month-old daughter and shaking her to death.
Since then, Dr. Toolsie's criminal drug charges and medical licensure problems contributed to several delays in Mr. Delashmitt's trial, which started Tuesday and ended Wednesday morning before a jury even was seated.
"We were tired of baby-sitting him," Assistant District Attorney Jim Stutts said. "We were hoping to at least keep him presentable for a trial, knowing his credibility was going to be questioned."
Mr. Stutts said the last straw came just before Mr. Delashmitt's trial was to begin Wednesday. He said Dr. Toolsie's attorney, Charles Currier, told court officials that the doctor's Tennessee medical license might be suspended for the second time in 15 months.
"That was information we had to pass along to the defense since they could use that to cross-examine Dr. Toolsie, should he be on the witness stand," Mr. Stutts said.
The rape charge was dismissed and Mr. Delashmitt pleaded guilty to negligent homicide and child neglect.
Mr. Currier did not return calls seeking comment Thursday.
Mr. Delashmitt was given a five-year sentence with credit for three and a half years already served. He'll serve the remaining time on probation unless he gets into trouble again.
His attorney, John Eldridge, said his client had offered over the years to plead guilty to the same charges in the plea deal.
"I kept telling him ( Mr. Stutts) that is what we were guilty of and what we would plead to," Mr. Eldridge said Thursday from his Knoxville office.
Even so, he said, he was surprised Wednesday morning when Mr. Stutts made the offer.
DELAY AFTER DELAY
Mr. Delashmitt was arrested days after his daughter died and confessed. He remained in jail until 2007, when Criminal Court Judge Carroll Ross tossed out his confession because law officers denied his request for an attorney before he made the statement.
Also in 2007, Tennessee's chief medical examiner, Bruce Levy, and Knox County Deputy Medical Examiner Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan reviewed Dr. Toolsie's autopsy and disputed the results. They said the child drowned and was not sexually assaulted.
In 2009, Tennessee suspended Dr. Toolsie's medical license. At his hearing, Dr. Toolsie admitted to ordering large quantities of controlled drugs for 13 years and that he distributed them to people who were not his patients. He admitted he maintained no medical records of these 53 people.
He also admitted he had self-medicated with hydrocodone, Valium and phentermine, according to state documents.
Tennessee reinstated Dr. Toolsie's license in October after he agree to five years' probation. But the same month, he was indicted in Hamilton County on three counts of unlawful distribution of a controlled substance, one count of failure to keep required records of controlled substances and two counts of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud. Those charges are pending.
Then on April 29, Georgia suspended Dr. Toolsie's license based on the Tennessee allegations, officials said. Mr. Stutts said Dr. Toolsie's attorney told him that Tennessee was expected to do the same in reciprocity with Georgia.
Mr. Stutts said he could not tell Judge Ross when Dr. Toolsie would be available.
Dr. Toolsie's own attorney had advised him to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions, Mr. Stutts said, and Mr. Delashmitt's attorney would attack the autopsy results.
Mr. Stutts said he could have hoped jurors didn't notice the state had no strong medical evidence of rape and shaken baby syndrome. But he said jurors would have seen that and it was a matter of honesty.
"Our biggest problem in the Delashmitt case was that the medical evidence is a matter of opinion," Mr. Stutts said. So he offered the plea agreement.
Angel Delashmitt's mother and grandmother said Wednesday they did not like the outcome but they understood.
"There was nothing the DA could do about it," said Annette Beloat, the baby's grandmother.
Does she blame Dr. Toolsie for the outcome?
"Oh, God, yes," she said.
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