A Case of Justice

BROCKTON — A lawyer for a South Shore father who is accused of killing his 4-year-old daughter with an overdose of psychotropic drugs, told jurors yesterday that the child’s psychiatrist is the only one responsible for the girl’s death. In closing statements, John G. Darrell said Michael Riley, 37, and his wife, Carolyn, 35, relied on the advice of Dr. Kayoko Kifuji of Tufts Medical Center in dispensing medications and understood they had some flexibility in dosages. Kifuji had diagnosed Rebecca, as well as her two older siblings, with bipolar and hyperactivity disorders and put each on three potent mood-altering drugs. “What would have saved her [Rebecca] is to have Dr. Kifuji stay in Japan,’’ said Darrell, referring to Kifuji’s decision in 1994 to leave her native Japan for a triple-residency program at Tufts in pediatrics, child, and adult psychiatry. She currently practices at Tufts. Prosecutor Frank J. Middleton also condemned Kifuji, calling her a quack and a disgrace to the medical profession. However, he told jurors that primary responsibility for the lethal overdose falls on the parents. He said that the father was an abusive, selfish bully who presided over the financially strapped, troubled family and that on a December night in 2006 he and his wife decided to give Rebecca an overdose of the sedating drug, clonidine, to get her to sleep when she struggled with a severe respiratory illness. “It’s such an outrageous case of child abuse,’’ Middleton told jurors, who will resume deliberations this morning after meeting for several hours yesterday. The Rileys, both from Weymouth, were each accused of first-degree murder after Rebecca was found dead on the floor of the couple’s bedroom in Hull on the morning of Dec. 13, 2006. Carolyn was tried separately earlier this year. On Feb. 9, she was convicted of second-degree murder and received a mandatory life sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 years. Prosecutors say the parents fabricated behavioral symptoms in all of their children to get medications to sedate them, and help the family qualify for federal childhood disability benefits. In both trials, the medical examiner and other toxicology specialists said the girl’s bloodstream had a toxic level of clonidine, a blood pressure medication also used as a sedative for children with hyperactivity disorder. Prosecutors say that the couple nicknamed clonidine “happy medicine’’ and routinely gave it to the children when the parents wanted them to quiet down or go to bed. Both parents, however, presented a medical expert that said Rebecca died of aggressive pneumonia and that clonidine played no role in her death. Kifuji, on the witness stand in both trials, had testified that she never allowed dangerous levels of extra dosages. She initially declined to testify, invoking her right against self-incrimination. She later took the stand, however, when the prosecution granted her immunity from prosecution. She faces a medical malpractice suit in this case