A Manhattan jury convicted a doctor of second-degree manslaughter on Thursday after prosecutors said he used his wife as a test subject and gave her fatal doses of a mineral supplement called selenium to treat her chronic illness.
Dr. Jeffrey Harris could spend up to 15 years in prison. His wife, Tammy Harris, died at Lenox Hill Hospital during a 2018 trip to New York City.
A medical examiner found 1,700 micrograms of selenium in her body, according to prosecutors. The National Institutes of Health lists the daily upper limit for adults at 400 micrograms, while the recommended amount is just 55 micrograms.
“The dose makes the poison,” Assistant District Attorney Heather Pearson said during closing arguments this week.
Prosecutors said multiple doctors had diagnosed Tammy Harris with lupus, an autoimmune disease, but that her husband did not want to accept their medical advice. Instead, the district attorneys argued that he became obsessed with his own theory that she had elevated levels of mercury and that he concocted his own treatment plan for her, including giving her excessive doses of selenium in the months leading up to her death. They said he continued to pursue his theory even after medical tests found no abnormal levels of mercury in her body.
Harris’ defense attorney, Jason Goldman, said his client was “stubborn” and “misguided,” but that he was acting out of love.
“He was trying to save her,” Goldman said during closing statements. “He was convinced that he was.”
Prosecutors described Harris as a controlling husband who used his knowledge of medicine to intimidate his wife and her daughters from a past relationship and deter them from seeking other forms of treatment. They also said that as a doctor he should have known the risk he was taking when he continued to give her selenium and ignored the advice of other medical professionals.
“He recklessly chose to disregard every rule and every limit,” Pearson told the jury.
Pearson said…
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