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Doctor: Victim injected with insulin
By Matt bean
(Court TV) -- - A doctor who treated the victim of an alleged identity-theft murder plot testified Thursday that his patient was injected with massive amounts of insulin, sending her blood-sugar levels on a perilous downward spiral. "It was injected in some fashion into her body," said Dr. George Stephens, testifying at the alleged ringleader's attempted murder trial. "You cannot eat insulin, it will be broken down just like a sirloin steak would. You must inject it." Prosecutors say that Tonica Jenkins, 27, the defendant in this Cleveland trial, sought to kill the victim, Melissa Latham, by injecting her with catastrophic levels of insulin on April 21, 2001. When that didn't work, she allegedly asked her cousin, Kyle Martin, to beat Latham to death with a brick. Jenkins wanted Latham dead, say prosecutors, as part of an elaborate ruse to escape prosecution on drug charges connected to a 2000 cocaine bust in Florida. She allegedly spent days looking for the appropriate victim, telling potential recruits that she was running an insurance scam requiring a quick visit to the dentist. An East Cleveland woman, Michelle Sharpe, told jurors Thursday that Jenkins approached her on the porch of her home. "She said, 'You'll get your teeth cleaned for free and you'll get 100 dollars,'" Sharpe told the jury. Sharpe eventually agreed to help recruit another woman instead. Two days before the alleged murder attempt, she and Jenkins and Martin found Latham. After an evening of plying Latham with crack, Jenkins allegedly brought her to a dental clinic on the 20th, where she had Latham file dental records under her own name. The second part of Jenkins' bid to shed her identity was to kill and burn Latham beyond recognition, leaving only the crossed dental records pointing to her. But Latham, now 29, testified Wednesday that she escaped the basement when her attackers left her for dead, ran to a Kentucky Fried Chicken across the street, and was eventually brought to a nearby hospital. In the emergency room, testified the doctor, Latham spiraled down into unconsciousness. She was suffering from a condition called "hypoglycemia," testified the doctor, usually caused by an overload of insulin in the blood. The more insulin in the blood, the less sugar, and when Stephens, the doctor, measured Latham's levels on a standardized scale, her blood sugar hit nine, compared to normal scores of between 80 and 120. Stephens then administered a pair of tests to determine whether the increased insulin was naturally produced or injected, concluding that it was injected. Jenkins lawyer, James Jenkins (no relation) attempted to connect the victim's elevated insulin levels to a preexisting medical condition. The lawyer tried to argue outside of the presence of the jury that Latham's low blood sugar levels could instead have been caused by metabolic changes in the body caused by her HIV-positive status. District Judge Lillian J. Greene denied Jenkins, saying "I'm not even going to get into that." It wasn't the first time Jenkins tried to introduce Latham's HIV status. On Wednesday, he was twice stopped mid-sentence when he asked Latham directly whether she was HIV-positive. And Thursday afternoon, the lawyer seemed to approach the subject again, asking the dentist who administered the crossed dental exam whether he had considered whether his patient had a communicable disease. The state's objection was immediately sustained by Judge Greene. On Thursday, the jury got a look at physical evidence found at Tonica Jenkins' Cleveland home, including a crack pipe, a spoon, and a syringe. Other physical evidence, including a bloody McDonald's shirt allegedly worn by the victim and a blood-spattered brick, were also introduced. Jenkins' mother, Tonica Clement, is also standing trial on an obstruction of justice charge in a joined proceeding for allegedly cleaning up the bloody basement.
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