Christopher Duntsch, 44 years old, was accused of intentionally crippling a significant number of his patients, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Duntsch, who’s a neurosurgeon from Texas, used to be dubbed as the “madman with a scalpel.” He was convicted for the death of at two of his patients, one of which was an elderly man he deliberately mangled during a surgery.
Duntsch, who’s from Plano, was found guilty of causing injure to an elderly person. A jury discussed his case for only four hours on Tuesday before submitting their final verdict on the accused.
He was also sentenced with first-degree felony. The conviction could jail the surgeon for the rest of his life.
Duntsch practiced his work at various hospitals in Dallas and Collin counties. He was accused of maiming four patients. Two of them died between July 2012 and June 2013.
One of the victims was Mary Efurd. She lost three quarters of her blood and the mobility of her leg after Duntsch performed a surgery on her when she was 74 years old. This incident happened in 2012.
Efurd said, “I trusted him. I trusted that he would do what was right.”
According to the prosecutors, although Duntsch had 17 years of extensive training, his frequently failed surgeries prove otherwise. Some of the accusations imposed on him were improperly placing screws and plates into patients and misplacing surgical hardware inside their bodies.
Robbie McClung, defense attorney, said, “The problem was that he was not a trained surgeon. He was not a skilled surgeon. He was, according to his peers, at the level of a first-year resident, but he was on his own and doing the best he could.”
D Magazine wrote a haunting profile on the doctor. Toby Shook, defense attorney from Dallas, told D Magazine, “I cannot recall a physician being indicted for aggravated assault for acts committed during surgery. And not just Dallas County—I don’t recall hearing about it anywhere.” Shook had worked as a Dallas County prosecutor for 23 years.
Prosecutors, however, said Duntsch “chose not to get help.” So, this portrayal of him having lack of skill set to perform properly should not even be considered as a defense.
Michelle Shughart, prosecutor, said, “He chose to continue maiming and killing patients.”
Duntsch wrote an email to one of the hospital’s employees a year before maiming his patients. It read: “What I am being is what I am, one of kind, a [expletive] stone cold killer.”
