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) — Despite being hamstrung by a pretrial ruling that prevented them from effectively pursuing their initial prosecution theory, Florida state attorneys Thursday were able to convict Kathy Bush of aggravated child abuse and organized fraud for purposely exaggerating or inducing chronic illnesses in her daughter, Jennifer.

After nearly three months of interrupted testimony, jurors apparently agreed with prosecutors, who stressed that Jennifer's severe chronic illnesses coincided with the presence of her mother. The prosecution believed that Bush either made her daughter chronically sick or fabricated Jennifer'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.

The testimony of treating nurses, doctors and child abuse experts helped prosecutors gain the conviction. These witnesses said that Jennifer's condition frequently deteriorated when her mother visited. According to the nurses' testimony, when Bush would visit her daughter, she would draw the curtains and close the door. After Bush emerged from the room, the witnesses said, jennifer would be sick.

Prosecutor Bob Nichols also suggested that Bush tampered with her daughter's medication and feeding tubes. He reminded jurors that nurses testified that Kathy Bush's handwriting appeared on doctor's orders, that Jennifer had high, sometimes toxic, levels of a medication in her system, and that feeding pumps mysteriously speeded up after Bush's visits. Nichols also presented witnesses who testified that Bush seemed to exaggerate her daughter's illnesses.

In addition, jurors apparently were convinced by testimony that Jennifer's health had improved drastically since being removed from her mother's care in 1996 and placed with foster parents.

But Bush's defense, led by attorney Robert Buschel, stressed in closings that Jennifer's health began to improve before she was taken away from her mother. Bush insisted that she never harmed her daughter and that Jennifer's illnesses were legitimate and even genetic. Jennifer's older brothers, the defense argued, suffered from the same illnesses but are now healthy.

During the trial and in closing arguments, Buschel called the prosecution's aggravated child abuse allegations against his client nothing more than "innuendo, gossip and supposition." 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.

Buschel stressed to the jury that prosecutors had nothing but circumstantial evidence against his client and that they did not prove their case beyond reasonable doubt. He reminded jurors 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.

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 or fabricate illnesses in their children to get attention for themselves. They intended to prove that Bush suffered from the mental disorder at the beginning of the trial.

But prosecutors encountered trouble even before the trial began. At first, 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.

—Bryan Robinson