Physician says Duncan victim suffered intense pain
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By REBECCA BOONE
The Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho -- A boy who was kidnapped, tortured and shot by Joseph Edward Duncan III likely suffered excruciating pain before his death, a forensic pediatrician told jurors Wednesday.
Dr. Sharon Cooper's testimony in U.S. District Court followed the presentation of a taped interview in which Shasta Groene, 8 at the time, related grim details of Duncan's sexual abuse and slaying of her older brother, Dylan. Groene, who also said she was sexually abused and tortured, told the jury Duncan accidentally shot her brother in the stomach and then intentionally shot him in the head after deciding the boy's life couldn't be saved.
Cooper said the description of the boy's injury -- he was eviscerated, his sister said, with his "guts" hanging out -- indicated it was "a very potentially salvageable injury."
"We see this on the battlefield fairly often," Cooper told the jury. "They can live for several hours like that."
Cooper also said Duncan may have had enough time to get Dylan Groene to a hospital from the remote western Montana campsite where the shooting occurred.
Duncan pleaded guilty in December to 10 federal counts in the 2005 kidnapping of the Coeur d'Alene-area children and the murder of the boy. A jury must decide whether Duncan should be executed or spend life in prison without parole.
Duncan, acting as his own attorney in the sentencing phase, suggested in cross-examining Cooper that the girl was exaggerating her brother's injury.
"How much in your experience do children tend to elaborate or exaggerate and fill in details ... especially after a traumatic experience like that?" Duncan asked.
Children who exaggerate are typically much younger, between 4 and 6, and lack the vocabulary to describe what happened to them, Cooper said.
Duncan bludgeoned to death the children's older brother, mother and her fiance at their home before abducting the pair in May 2005, setting off a nationwide manhunt. Duncan has pleaded guilty in state court to the killings at the house.
While it is The Associated Press' policy not to identify victims of sexual assault in most cases, the search for Shasta and Dylan Groene was so heavily publicized that their names are widely known.
Duncan, formerly from Tacoma, Wash., has a long string of arrests and convictions for crimes ranging from car theft to rape and molestation. He is suspected in the slayings of two half-sisters from Seattle in 1996 and is charged with killing a young boy in Riverside County, Calif., in 1997.
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Death is too good for this man. Put him in a room and send parents and loved ones in with baseball bats.
Evil sick man. What is the world coming to?