Doctor in New Year’s Eve Baby Controversy Loses License

The California Medical Board on Wednesday revoked the license of embattled Anaheim physician Charles Wesley Turner Jr., who was found negligent in his delivery of 12 babies-- including two who died, and one newborn who was displayed at a New Year’s Eve midnight church service.

The board, ruling in Sacramento, based its decision on a recommendation by Administrative Law Judge William F. Byrnes, who concluded after a six-week trial that Turner had been “grossly negligent” in his treatment of three babies born at his Covenant Birthing Center on the grounds of the Melodyland Christian Center in Anaheim.

Turner, 65, has told The Times that he used an anesthetic and forceps to speed up the delivery of the New Year’s baby, who was delivered 15 seconds after midnight on Jan. 1, 1990.

Turner swaddled 6-pound, 12-ounce Myra Kristine Palmer in a blanket and a Christmas stocking and whisked her 150 feet outside to a building next door, where he displayed her to the Melodyland congregation at a televised religious service as the first baby of the New Year. The baby was unharmed.

In a written decision, Byrnes found that Turner’s “removing the baby from the birthing center for viewing by the next-door church congregation constituted gross negligence.”

Turner’s attorney, Roy O. Moss Jr., said experts for the defense had testified that Turner’s actions were not negligent.

“I just can’t believe some of the findings,” he said. “In my opinion, if you can get doctors to disagree that it’s negligence, how you can find gross negligence is beyond me.”

Moss said he received the board’s decision Wednesday afternoon and had not informed Turner or reached a decision on whether to appeal the revocation.

Turner could not be reached for comment.

Turner was placed on five years’ probation by the board in 1984 for illegally prescribing drugs, and subsequently lost his privileges at two Orange County hospitals.

Two babies Turner delivered at the birthing center died within days of birth.

The first case involved a 14-year-old mother whose pregnancy was high risk because of her age and who should have delivered her baby in a hospital, Byrnes found. The baby was born on Aug. 4, 1990, and Turner discharged him within eight hours, although the baby had “grunting respiration” and failed to suck, both signs of infant distress.

Several hours later, the infant developed seizures, was taken to a hospital in full cardiac arrest and died two days later.

In the second case, Turner failed to diagnose a mother with gestational diabetes and her baby was born dead on Thanksgiving Day, 1990, Byrnes found. He ruled that Turner’s actions in that case had also been grossly negligent.

Byrnes also found that Turner had mishandled the prenatal care and deliveries of nine other patients at Santa Ana Hospital and at his birthing center.