SUSPECTED FLORIDA MUNCHAUSEN TRIAL
				July 20 Update (Opening Statements) July 21 Update July 22 Update Aug. 3 Update Aug. 26 Update Sept. 29 Update Oct. 5 Update Oct. 6 Update Oct. 7 (The Verdict)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (Court TV) — After three months of interrupted testimony, jurors in the trial of Kathy Bush are deciding whether she is guilty of deliberately causing her daughter's chronic illnesses.

The Florida jury began deliberations Wednesday night after Bush's attorney, Robert Buschel, called the prosecution's aggravated child abuse allegations against his client nothing more than "innuendo, gossip and supposition." Florida prosecutors believe that Bush either made her daughter chronically sick or fabricated Jennifer Bush's illnesses over a two-year period. Between August 1993 and April 1995, Bush took Jennifer to the hospital on 130 separate occasions. Jennifer Bush underwent approximately 40 surgeries for chronic illnesses such as immune system deficiency, gastrointestinal problems and seizure disorders, and needed a feeding tube to eat.

In his closing arguments Wednesday, Buschel stressed that Bush never harmed her daughter and that Jennifer's illnesses were legitimate and hereditary. Jennifer's older brothers, he said, suffered from the same illnesses but are now healthy. Buschel suggested that state officials and the nurses who testified against Bush had conspired against her and that Bush would have had to have been a magician to fabricate Jennifer's sickness.

"They have destroyed this family, and Kathy Bush wants to know why," Buschel told jurors. "You would have to believe [Bush] outsmarted board-certified doctors."

Buschel stressed to the jury that prosecutors have nothing but circumstantial evidence against their client and that they have not proven their case beyond reasonable doubt. Comparing the state's case to the board game Clue, he said prosecutors spent the entire trial trying to prove who allegedly did what to Jennifer — but prosecutors stumbled and failed. Buschel reminded the jury about the prosecution's most embarrassing moment in court: in July, the late Joe DiMaggio's medical records had somehow gotten mixed in with Jennifer's voluminous files. Judge Victor Tobin subsequently had to suspend the trial for a week to give prosecutors a chance to organize some 3,000 pages of Jennifer's records.

The prosecution has claimed that Jennifer's health has improved drastically since being taken out of her mother's care and placed with foster parents. But Buschel stressed in closings that Jennifer's health began to improve before she was taken away from her mother. He also pointed out that after being removed from her mother's care, Jennifer was almost given a fatal dose of painkillers in a Cincinnati hospital.

During his rebuttal closings, prosecutor Bob Nichols dismissed the defense's conspiracy allegations and again noted that Jennifer's health only deteriorated when her mother was around. He stressed that previous witnesses testified that Bush tended to exaggerate her daughter's illnesses and that it was time to hold the defendant accountable for making her daughter suffer unnecessarily.

"The only person who has been proven to have given false statements to medical personnel is Kathy Bush," Nichols said. "Now is the time to hold Mrs. Bush responsible for her actions, for all of this. There was no reason for this girl [Jennifer] to suffer through her life."

When prosecutors first charged Kathy Bush with child abuse they alleged that she suffers from Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy, an illness that causes parents to harm their children or fabricate illnesses in their children to get attention for themselves. They intended to prove she suffered from the mental disorder at the beginning of the trial.

But prosecutors encountered trouble even before the trial began. They seemed unable to overcome a pretrial ruling by presiding Judge Victor Tobin that prohibited specific mention of Bush's alleged Munchausen disorder until evidence about it was introduced in court.

By the end of trial testimony, prosecutors had backed away from their Munchausen theory, avoiding specific mention of the disease while having witnesses suggest that Bush fabricated or induced her daughter's illnesses.

If convicted of child abuse, Kathy Bush could face 15 years in prison.

—Bryan Robinson