State official ‘cannot rule out’ possibility that boy’s death was accidental

IOWA CITY - The state medical examiner on Thursday told the 14 jurors hearing the second-degree murder trial of Brian Dykstra in Iowa City that she can't say whether his toddler son's death was accidental or intentional.

“Can you rule out an accidental death in this case?” Dykstra's defense attorney, Leon Spies, asked Iowa Chief Medical Examiner Julia Gooden.

“No, I cannot,” she said. “I cannot rule that out.”

Gooden ruled the cause of Isaac Dyktra's death to be head injuries. But she found the manner - how the injuries occurred - to be undetermined.

Brian Dykstra told authorities after calling 911 on Aug. 13, 2005, that his son, Isaac, had fallen down two stairs a few days earlier and that he had grabbed his head and started crying that morning. He did not give any other details of what happened on the morning of Aug. 13 before the boy was rushed to the hospital with severe head injuries.

Gooden testified that a child could suffer a hemorrhage, brain swelling and bleeding in the retinas of the eyes from an accidental fall. She also told jurors that a child could suffer a head injury and then have “lucid intervals” before his injuries got the best of him.

Still, Gooden said, it's likely that “something happened” on the day Isaac was hospitalized that either caused or contributed to his death.

Prosecutors have called numerous medical professionals who treated Isaac who say they believe the 21-month-old had to have suffered the injuries that took his life on the day he was rushed to the hospital.

Ronald Spiegel, a pediatric neurologist who worked on Isaac in 2005, testified that the boy suffered a substantial and devastating brain injury on Aug. 13, 2005, before his father called 911 and told an operator that his son might have had a seizure.

“The degree of injury that is sufficient to cause a hematoma is going to cause symptoms immediately,” Spiegel said. “It's not going to be two to three days later that there is a sudden and catastrophic change in the child.”

Isaac was pronounced brain-dead on Aug. 14, 2005. Investigators immediately considered the case suspicious, but they didn't arrest Dykstra until three years later.

Dykstra, who had moved to South Carolina, posted a $15,000 bond and returned to the South to await his trial, which started Monday and is expected to last more than a week.

A group of friends and family members have been in the courtroom to support Dykstra, who typically wears a dark suit, stares straight ahead and makes no expression.

Prosecutors on Thursday tried to admit evidence from the Russian orphanage where Isaac was living before being adopted by the Dykstras that showed he was in good health. Assistant County Attorney Ann Lahey said they want to cut off a defense argument that Isaac was developmentally delayed and had issues dating back to his time in Russia.

A Johnson County judge determined that the documentation from Russia is hearsay and would not be admitted.