YORK COUNTY, S.C. — York County Coroner Sabrina Gast told Channel 9 she could have quietly signed the death certificate for Daxton Green and filed it away in her office.
Instead, she wanted the public to hear about what happened to the newborn on Jan. 20.
Read our past coverage:
- Newborn's death at birth center ruled as homicide
- Coroner investigating death of baby at Fort Mill birthing center
On Thursday, Gast held a rare inquest into the death of the baby boy, who died moments after he was delivered by midwives at the Carolina Community Maternity Center in Fort Mill.
The newborn's father, Ryan Green, testified about seeing his son not breathing.
"You could tell right away that he was very limp, very lifeless," Ryan Green said.
He became concerned when near the end of labor a midwife asked that a resuscitator bag be brought in and placed on the bed, just in case. The moment Daxton was born, midwives saw that he was covered in meconium, a stool that is the first waste a newborn passes upon birth.
An autopsy later found that meconium was in the boy's lungs and air passages.
The official cause of death of was meconium aspiration, but Thursday a six-member jury found the manner of death to be homicide.
Gast said the family was surprised by the ruling.
"It's a lot to digest for a family that, No. 1, just lost their baby six months ago. And now we have a jury that has said that somebody was responsible for the death of their child," Gast said.
However, no criminal charges were filed against the birthing center, or its midwives.
Solicitor Kevin Brackett reviewed the case with the coroner, York County sheriff's deputies and South Carolina Law Enforcement Division agents.
He said the high standard for criminal negligence was not met.
He describes that standard like this: "It's doing something that is so reckless and so grossly negligent that any person looking at would go, 'There's a reasonable chance someone's going to die here.'"
Brackett described criminal negligence using an example of someone playing with a loaded gun and shooting someone.
They had no intent to kill, but they should have made sure the gun was not loaded before pointing it at someone.
"That's gross negligence," he said. "A disregard for human life."
A civil lawsuit could follow in the baby's death, but the Green family has not filed one at this time.
The Carolina Community Maternity Center has another wrongful death lawsuit pending against it, filed by another family whose infant was stillborn there in 2013.
In light of the two deaths, the coroner called on state health officials to toughen standards for birthing centers.
"We really need to step up our game a little bit on the regulations that are overseeing these centers, because obviously there's an issue," Gast said.
Brackett said Friday that he would only reopen the case if there was some new evidence that shed a different light on what happened in Daxton's death.
The maternity center's website says the business is no longer accepting new clients or delivering babies. The last birth there was in February.
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