PHILADELPHIA, June 5, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – For weeks, jurors gazed on the filthy furniture and medical items retrieved from Kermit Gosnell's “house of horrors.” Now, prosecutors have have given the public a glimpse of what jurors saw in a new video.
After the judge denied prosecutor Joanne Pescatore's request to take the jury to the infamous facility located at 3801 Lancaster Avenue, she and assistant prosecutor Ed Cameron brought a number of the items into the courtroom.
The miniature suite included an operating table, a tattered recliner, a garbage disposal, and various emergency tubes.
In a sense, they became the prosecution's star witness inside Courtroom 302 of the Criminal Justice Center. The 2011 grand jury report painted a picture of horror beyond words, but the medical items brought their words into undeniable reality.
Much of the equipment – aged, dilapidated, and caked with dirt – was discolored and ill-kept. An emergency tracheotomy kit, usually clear or off-white, was stained brown. Some of the equipment would shock women during ultrasounds.
Patients were made to lie on operating tables caked with blood from other women, and their babies, and STDs were passed between patients by his unsterilized care.
The conditions matched Gosnell's shoddy practices. At one point during his closing arguments, an emotional Cameron asked the doctor, “Are you human?” Gosnell remained unmoved. ““He just sat there for the past eight weeks smirking,” said juror David Misko. “It was just business as usual, and he snipped the [newborn babies'] necks no matter what happened.”
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Keeping the facilities dank and the equipment outdated helped pad the bottom line. Gosnell raked in between $1.8 and $2 million a year plying his trade among Philadelphia's slums.
Despite his money living in filth was a way of life for the doctor, who practiced at his Women's Medical Society as well as a facility in Delaware, where he has avoided facing charges. Philadelphia Police Crimes Scene Unit Detective John Taggart, who raided one of his many properties, said he lived in “squalor.”
“He would leave plates of food on the floor. There was stuff everywhere in the bedroom. You couldn’t see the bed,” he said. “As soon as [investigators] went down into the basement, they were covered in fleas.”
A mostly “pro-choice” jury convicted Gosnell of three counts of first-degree murder on May 13, as well as one count of involuntary manslaughter and hundreds of abortion law violations. The 72-year-old is serving three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.