Eight plead not guilty in boy's boot camp death

Eight plead not guilty in boy's boot camp death

Seven guards and a nurse face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 19, 2007

PANAMA CITY - Attorneys for seven former juvenile boot camp guards and a nurse entered pleas of not guilty Thursday to manslaughter charges stemming from a teenager's death.

A videotape showed the guards manhandling 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson in January 2006 as the nurse watched and did nothing. The youth died a day later.
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The eight worked at the now-closed Bay County sheriff's boot camp, where Anderson collapsed while doing exercises. The guards said they were trying to revive him, but Anderson's family and legislators were outraged by a security video showing the boy being kneed and struck.

Some of the guards' relatives and friends sat in the front row of the courtroom Thursday wearing hand-painted sweat shirts adorned with yellow ribbons and the slogan, "We support you."

Genie Caruthers said the public has the wrong idea about the guards. "We are just a group of concerned citizens and we want them to know we care," she said.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/01/19/State/Eight_plead_not_guilt.shtml

Judge delays boot camp suit
January 18, 2007

By David Angier
News Herald Writer 747-5077 / dangier@pcnh.com

TALLAHASSEE

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle said Wednesday there would be no way to have a fair trial in the boot camp federal lawsuit until the state criminal case is over.

Hinkle reluctantly set aside the April trial date for a $40 million lawsuit from the parents of a 14-year-old boy who died after his first day at the nowdefunct Bay County Sheriff’s Office Boot Camp.

Martin Lee Anderson collapsed Jan. 5 and died the next morning at a Pensacola hospital after drill instructors manhandled him when he failed to comply with their orders to resume a run.
http://www.newsherald.com/free/article.display.php?id=67693

Posted on Thu, Jan. 18, 2007

FLORIDA PANHANDLE
Boot camp examiner can stay on job
The medical examiner who did an autopsy on a teenager who died at a boot camp can work out his contract, a state panel ruled.
BY RON WORD
Associated Press

PONTE VEDRA BEACH - A medical examiner who performed a disputed autopsy on a teenager who died after an altercation with guards at a Panama City boot camp can continue working under supervision the remaining months of his contract, the state's Medical Examiner's Commission said Wednesday.

The commission unanimously approved a quality assurance program under which Dr. Barbara Wolf, a medical examiner in Fort Myers, will review all Dr. Charles Siebert's work. She may then gradually reduce the amount of supervision down to 10 percent. She will also review all his autopsies on homicides and undetermined deaths until his contract ends in June. Wolf and Siebert began the peer review program in November, about three months after the commission first met to discuss his fate.

The commission in August, in an administrative complaint, found Siebert was negligent in performing 39 of 698 autopsies it reviewed.

In Donna Faye Reed's autopsy report, Siebert had said ''the prostate gland and testes are unremarkable'' -- organs that are part of the male genitalia. In the second autopsy of the woman, who died in a 2004 tornado spawned by Hurricane Ivan, Siebert corrected the male genitalia, but incorrectly said she had a uterus. It had been surgically removed in an earlier operation, the complaint said.

In two cases, he misidentified black victims as white in reports, and he failed to consider that a person found face down in a bathtub had drowned. The death was attributed to methadone toxicity, the complaint said.
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16485011.htm