Court halts hearings in Pap smears case

The Journal Sentinel staff

Minutes into a highly unusual inquest into the cancer deaths of two women whose Pap smears were misread, the state Court of Appeals Tuesday temporarily halted the proceeding to allow attorneys for the targets of the inquest to argue for a permanent stay.

District Attorney E. Michael McCann was midway through his opening statement to jurors when Circuit Judge Jeffrey A. Wagner received a telephone call that defense attorneys' last-minute motion for emergency relief was granted by the court of appeals.

After a hearing before the appellate court was tentatively scheduled for Wednesday morning, Wagner sent the jurors home for the night, informing them that the inquest was temporarily suspended "because of matters beyond our control."

Defense attorneys, charging that McCann was abusing his inquest authority, sought the temporary stay after Circuit Judge George A. Burns Jr. earlier in the day denied their motion that the inquest be blocked. Burns concluded that he lacked the power to block the inquest, saying McCann's role in an inquest "is a constitutional officer endowed with a discretion that approaches the quasi-judicial."

"Whether I personally agree with Mr. McCann's decision to have an inquest in this case is entirely beside the point," Burns said in his written decision. "So long as I am satisfied that his decision to proceed is attended by good faith and is not the product of his whim or caprice, my hands are tied."

After he issued his decision, defense attorneys asked Burns for a temporary stay, but he denied it, so they turned to the court of appeals.

McCann requested the inquest earlier this month into the deaths of Karin Smith and Delores A. Geary. Smith died March 8; Geary died in 1993.

Smith was 22 in 1988 when she complained to physicians about vaginal bleeding. During the following three years, her health maintenance organization took two Pap smears of cervical tissue and did three separate biopsies, and each time the test results were incorrectly read as being negative.

In 1987, at age 34, Geary had a Pap smear, according to a lawsuit she filed in 1991. The smear was sent to the same lab to which Smith's sample later was sent.

In 1990, Geary began having symptoms of gynecologic problems. Another smear was taken and sent to the lab, and again the results were determined incorrectly, according to her lawsuit.

More tests found that she had cancer of the cervix and she died in May 1993 after cancer had spread to her lymph system.

Before the court of appeals intervened late Tuesday afternoon, a panel of eight inquest jurors, including two alternates, was selected from a pool of 25 people. The six women and two men on the panel include a hospital switchboard operator, a manager from Doyne Hospital, a self- employed salesman and a retired teacher.

Before the jury was selected, McCann questioned prospective jurors about a variety of medical topics, asking among other things whether any had grudges against physicians or had close friends or relatives who were diagnosed with cancer.

Before he was interrupted, McCann said in his opening statement that "we'll be focusing on the conduct" of the laboratory technician. The prosecutor said that at the time the technician was viewing Pap smears for the laboratory, professional trade standards suggested that a technician examine no more than 12,000 slides annually. In 1989, the technician analyzed 40,000, McCann said.

The physician who oversaw the technician will be scrutinized over whether he knew her work was being compromised by her workload.

Copyright 1995
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