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Texas Neurosurgeon Receives Life Sentence After Botched Surgeries

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Christopher Duntsch, 44, will no longer have the title of Neurosurgeon or doctor attached to his name after a jury on Monday morning sentenced him to spend the rest of his life in prison. Prosecutor Michelle Shughart told the jury in her closing statement, “This defendant single-handedly ruined their lives, and he gave each of them a life of pain.”

According to DMagazine, Monday concluded a “yearslong investigation into dozens of botched surgeries that resulted in two deaths and multiple cases of paralysis” that found Duntsch guilty of “five counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon as well as a single count of harming an elderly patient.”

Shughart argued that Duntsch had no conscious, and he knew he would continue to harm patients, but he did so for money, while his father, Don Duntsch, said that his son was upset after the botched surgeries and was once a competent stem cell researcher.

The jurors heard from families of patients as well as the patients themselves whose lives were ruined by Duntsch’s work. One patient passes out from chronic pain, another is paralyzed from the neck down on the right side and must speak in a whisper.

WFAA says Duntsch is the “first surgeon known to be sentenced to prison for a botched surgery.”