First Judicial Circuit Medical Examiner Dr. Deanna Oleske will be allowed to testify freely in the manslaughter trial of Gulf Breeze plastic surgeon Ben Brown.
After a lengthy hearing on Tuesday, Circuit Court Judge Clifton Drake ruled to deny a motion made by Brown’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, to limit Oleske’s testimony to matters outside the realm of toxicology.
Oleske had ruled that Brown’s wife, 33-year-old Hillary Brown, died due to complications brought on by lidocaine toxicity while undergoing several surgical procedures conducted by her husband. O’Mara questioned her findings and, at what is known as a Daubert hearing, presented his own expert in an attempt to refute those findings.
“You’re going to have to say whether you’re going to let her say to a jury ‘lidocaine toxicity killed this woman,” O’Mara argued.
Drake ruled that Oleske was not only qualified to testify, but that based on what she’d told the court during testimony at the July 7 motion hearing, she had facts to provide and had done a great deal of research before determining the cause and manner of Hillary Brown’s death.
“At every turn she was looking at other possible causes,” Drake said, refuting O’Mara’s assertion that Oleske had latched on to one cause of death in the case and refused to consider other possible options.
Hillary Brown went into cardiac arrest Nov. 21, 2023, as Brown was performing several procedures on her in his office, Restore Plastic Surgery, in the Tiger Point area of Gulf Breeze.
She never regained consciousness and died a week later when her family made the decision to take her off life support.
Brown was arrested June 17, 2024, on the charge of manslaughter by culpable negligence. An arrest report states that along with injecting Hillary with a toxic dose of lidocaine he also failed to instruct his staff to call 911 when it became clear she was experiencing a medical emergency.
Drake agreed to move the court date for the manslaughter trial from its scheduled August opening. A new date will be decided at Brown’s next court date in October.
This story will be updated.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Dr. Ben Brown loses effort to limit M.E. testimony in manslaughter case
Reporting by Tom McLaughlin, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Tom McLaughlin, Pensacola News Journal | USA TODAY Network
