The jury of eight men and four women deliberated for several hours before coming to the guilty verdict shortly before 2 p.m. Tuesday.
Martinson, 29, had been charged with 10 counts of aggravated child abuse stemming from Jan. 2, 2021, when his 3-month-old son was taken to the hospital and found to have 31 fractures, including 10 that were recent.
The jury found that Martinson recklessly, not intentionally, inflicted harm on the child. The six counts he was found guilty of included the five acute rib fractures, as well as a right femur fracture. The jury found him not guilty of four corner fractures in the boy’s right and left legs.
Aggravated child abuse in Wyoming carries a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.
District Judge Stuart Healy III has allowed Martinson to remain out on bond as he waits for his sentencing.
Deputy County Attorney Greg Steward said Martinson should go to jail, since he’s facing up to 150 years in prison and that the possibility of him fleeing has greatly increased.
Martinson’s defense attorney, Cassie Craven, said Martinson has been on bond for a year and a half with no violations, and that he has many family members and friends in Gillette. Healy decided to leave Martinson out on bond, noting that he needs a lot of support right now, and that he would find that from his family rather than being alone in a jail cell.
Final witnesses
The defense’s final two witnesses, who testified Monday, were doctors who testified to the boy having conditions that caused him to break bones more easily.
Dr. Susan Gootnick, a radiologist in the San Francisco area, reviewed the boy’s medical records from Gillette and Colorado, and she looked at his X-rays as well. She said the boy’s bones were “abnormal” and that he had Rickets, a disease caused by Vitamin D deficiency.
Specifically, the boy’s ribs and some of his vertebrae had not developed normally, Gootnick said.
The boy’s mother, Keasha Bullinger, had testified she was taking prescription medication for her hypothyroidism, a condition where the thyroid doesn’t create and release enough thyroid hormone into the blood stream.
Calcium, Vitamin D and thyroid hormone are needed for bone growth, Gootnick said, and she believed, from looking at his X-rays, that he had “weak bones” due to deficiencies in those areas.
Gootnick said she “saw nothing that showed this was child abuse,” and that there was “no radiological evidence” that the fractures were from non-accidental trauma.
Still, there had to be some exertion of force for those bones to break, she said, adding that something that wouldn’t affect someone with normal bones could have broken the baby’s bones.
Steward pointed out that Gootnick had several typographical errors in her report, and in one case misspelled “Rickets,” which he believed showed that she did not put a lot of effort into the report.
“So you can’t attack me on my (medical knowledge), just my grammar?” Gootnick asked.
The defense’s last witness was Dr. Michael Holick, an endocrinologist and a professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, has seen between 3,000 and 4,000 children with metabolic bone disorders over the course of 40 years.
He leads the Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Clinical Research Program at Boston University School of Medicine, which works to identify the genes that are responsible for this genetic disorder, which affects the strength of one’s connective tissues, which in turns weakens the bones.
Holick had talked to Bullinger about the child, and after the conversation, he had them fly out to Boston, where he diagnosed both Bullinger and the baby with Ehlers-Danhlos Syndrome.
Holick said that although he couldn’t rule out the child’s injuries were from non-accidental trauma, the baby’s diagnosis makes it much more likely that the baby received broken bones from normal handling.
When someone has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Holick compared it to building a steel bridge using rebar made out of plastic. Adults with this disorder are 10 times more likely to break a bone than someone without the disorder.
Holick spoke with the boy’s parents, and Bullinger told him the baby was spitting up, bruising easily, he sweat more than normal and his joints clicked. All of these are consistent with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Holick said. The baby had a bulging forehead, the whites of his eyes were bluish-gray and his skin was doughy. These also are signs of that disorder, he added.
“There’s no question” Bullinger has this disorder, Holick said, and he said he could say with a “high degree of medical certainty” that she passed it onto her baby, which could result in fractures from minor accidents, and bruising from normal handling.
Bullinger told Holick she broke a bone when she was 2 years old, and that she had about 15 fractures in her childhood. Holick said only the fracture she got when she was 2 factored into his final report.
Steward questioned Holick on why he didn’t include the other fractures.
Holick said he was concerned about Bullinger’s early fracture history. Any bones that were broken when she was older were less relevant.
The main thing that stood out to Holick was the “fragility fracture” Bullinger had when she was two, and he added that it doesn’t matter if she had one more fracture or 100 more. That one fracture from when she was a toddler told Holick all he needed to know.
Steward brought up Holick’s controversial past.
There is a lack of consensus in the medical world on whether children can be diagnosed with this disorder, since their bodies are still developing. Holick said he has 40 years of experience and has seen everyone from infants to adults, and he follows up with patients years later, so he can make a diagnosis that pediatricians can’t.
Since 2017, the Boston Medical Center barred Holick from evaluating children. On multiple occasions, Holick saw young patients despite the Boston Medical Center not allowing him to, and in 2021 he was terminated from the organization. Holick said Boston Medical Center was initially supportive of his research, but then he began to testify in trials against pediatricians in Boston, and he was successful.
Holick said he never had a patient complain, and that he was removed not because of his research but because he was “very effective in the courts system.”
