MILTON, Fla. (Court TV) — Attorneys for a doctor accused of killing his wife while performing cosmetic procedures on her have asked a judge to bar prosecutors from calling the medical examiner to testify in the case.
Dr. Benjamin Brown appears at a motions hearing on July 7, 2026. (Court TV)
Dr. Benjamin Brown, 43, has pleaded not guilty to felony manslaughter by culpable negligence in the death of his wife, Hillary Brown. Hillary Brown suffered a medical emergency while she was undergoing cosmetic procedures at her husband’s office on Nov. 21, 2023; she died a week later at a hospital on Nov. 28.
Dr. Deanna Oleske, who serves as the Chief Medical Examiner for Florida’s First Judicial District, submitted an autopsy report that concluded Hillary Brown’s cause of death was “complications of lidocaine toxicity,” but Benjamin Brown’s legal team is challenging not only Oleske’s diagnosis, but also her qualifications to come to the conclusion.
In their motion requesting a hearing to determine whether Oleske would be allowed to testify at the defendant’s trial, Benjamin Brown’s lawyers said that she has “no training or expertise in the area of toxicology,” and that “on various occasions [during a deposition] Dr. Oleske indicated that the line of questioning related to the lidocaine levels and their impact on a person would be ‘better asked of a toxicologist.'”
At a Daubert hearing on the motion on Tuesday, Oleske testified that she relied on Hillary Brown’s medical records, which included Benjamin Brown’s operative notes, as well as interviews from witnesses and police reports, to make her ruling on the alleged victim’s cause of death.
Hillary Brown had been at her husband’s office receiving muscle plication, liposuction, lip injections and “ear adjustment procedures.” In a criminal complaint outlining the charge in the case, officers said that Hillary Brown had been an active part of her own treatment, preparing bags of anesthetic — which included lidocaine — by herself; witnesses also told police that the alleged victim had taken “a plethora of pills” prior to the surgery, none of which were written down in her medical chart.
Witnesses who were in the office when the procedures were ongoing said that at one point during the surgeries, the IV bags that Hillary Brown had prepared ran out, “at which time [Benjamin] Brown poured ‘two containers into a bowl,’ ‘He didn’t dilute them or anything,’ and began to inject her arms and later her face. When he did this, Hillary began to say her vision was blurry.” Benjamin Brown allegedly continued the injections until his wife began “convulsing.” Witnesses offered to call 911 but said that the doctor told them not to do so for 10 to 15 minutes.
In addition to those comments from witnesses, Oleske testified that a comment the defendant himself made to doctors treating his wife in the emergency room led her to her final diagnosis. Benjamin Brown allegedly offered lidocaine toxicity as a potential explanation for his wife’s condition.
Oleske defended her conclusions, saying that she had analyzed other possible causes of Hillary Brown’s death. “The people who received her organs are all alive and are all doing well,” she said, explaining why a heart issue, for example, couldn’t have been her cause of death.
In March, the Florida Department of Health suspended Benjamin Brown’s medical license for one year following its investigation into the incident and imposed a $7,500 fine. After his suspension is concluded and the fine is paid, Brown will have to work under direct supervision for two years.
No trial date has been set in the case.
