To the editor:

On Jan. 4 District Attorney Suzanne Valdez dropped murder charges against my niece, Carrody Buchhorn, in the death of Oliver Ortiz. The report from the state’s retained pathologist, Dr. Jane Turner, found Oliver “had congenital heart disease (patent foramen ovale) that put him at risk for blood clots … resulting in myocardial infarction.” Dr. Turner concluded that Oliver “died from a natural disease and pathophysiologic processes unrelated to child abuse.”

Six years earlier, Dr. Erik Mitchell’s testimony that “…statistically the most likely cause of [Oliver’s] death was depolarization of the neurons in [Oliver’s] brain,” was used to put Carrody in prison. Five years ago, pediatric neurology experts said Mitchell’s theory was “fantastical,” “laughable” and “not supported by the body of science.” But Douglas County’s district attorney didn’t accept science. Mitchell’s testimony falls far short of the standards demanded of “expert witnesses.” He provided no statistics on his attributed cause of death, “depolarization,” which many medical experts have never heard of.

Dr. Turner’s 2023 opinion was based on a heart pathology report that we now know Mitchell had in October 2016, before charges against Carrody were filed. Dr. Turner’s opinion creates multiple questions about what Mitchell actually knew or should have known back in October 2016 about both Oliver’s heart malformation and his heart attack, long before Mitchell swore under oath that Oliver died from “depolarization.”

Yet Mitchell walks free. Shouldn’t Mitchell be held accountable for the impact his decisions have had on the last seven years of Carrody’s life and our family?

Armin Landis,

Lawrence