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Father arraigned in
daughter's death
Thursday, July 12, 2001
©2001 Associated Press (07-12) 08:29 PDT
SACRAMENTO (AP) --
Physician Dennis Jay
Tison was arraigned Wednesday on charges of murder and
child
homicide for allegedly throwing his 14-month-old baby daughter out of a second-story window. Defense attorney Donald
H. Heller maintained that the baby's death was an
accident
and that prosecutors are waging a "smear" campaign against the 35-year-old doctor because they have a weak case. Tison, who did not
enter a plea Wednesday, remains in custody at the county's main
jail
with no bail. He returns to court next Wednesday. In court papers, Deputy
District Attorney Mark Curry said he will ask that the
doctor
remain in custody without bail because he is a danger to the community. Tison, who runs
weight-loss clinics in Sacramento and Citrus Heights, faces 25 years
to
life in prison if convicted as charged. He was arrested Monday after a four-month investigation by the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department. Curry alleges Tison has
a history of mental instability, threats of violence and drug use.
In his home,
investigators found a cache of weapons, survivalist literature and
Nazi
paraphernalia, the prosecutor said in court records. His daughter, Isabel,
died during surgery in the trauma center at UC Davis
Medical
Center. Tison had originally taken her to Mercy Hospital. Although the Sacramento Coroner's Office lists the cause of death as blunt-force head trauma, Heller said hospital records show the baby died of cardiac arrest after she was given the wrong type of blood during transfusion. A spokeswoman for UC
Davis Medical Center said she did not have access to the
files
Wednesday and could not comment. Tison told
investigators Jan. 12 that he was working on his home computer and
had
placed Isabel, who weighed 23 pounds, on the desk to play. With his peripheral vision, he said, he saw the baby "leap like a cat" through the window, hitting the deck below. According to court
records, a biomechanical engineer reconstructed the baby's
last
moments with mannequins and concluded that she could not have fallen out of the window on her own. A pediatrician told investigators the girl was too young to have enough leg strength to jump or leap. Investigators found a
number of weapons in Tison's home, including a Heckler &
Koch
9 mm semiautomatic assault weapon and numerous shotguns, Curry said. Heller said his client
is a gun collector and "war buff." The survivalist manual found in
his
home was printed by the U.S. Army, he said. Tison has a license to carry a concealed weapon because of the cash he carries from his Bravo Medical Clinics and large amounts of diet drugs he keeps for his patients, the defense attorney said. ©2001 Associated
Press
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