Meth in baby 4 times toxic level

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

A 31-year-old Kane'ohe woman who turned herself in to authorities yesterday on charges that she poisoned her baby by using methamphetamine may have delivered the fatal dose before his birth, according to the medical examiner who performed the autopsy.

AIWOHI

Treyson Aiwohi was 2 days old when he died on July 17, 2001. During an autopsy, Goodhue found levels of methamphetamine in the baby that were four times the level considered toxic in an adult.

Tayshea Aiwohi, Treyson's mother, was released yesterday on $50,000 bail, the money scraped together by members of her family, said Mark Worsham, the lawyer who represented Aiwohi in Family Court.

He said she was proud, fighting, but frightened as she kept an appointment to turn herself in.

"She is doing well, under the circumstances," Worsham said. "She has a good support system.

"But, yes, she is very scared."

The Aiwohi case is the first in Hawai'i, and one of few in the nation, in which a mother faced criminal charges for allegedly poisoning her baby by using methamphetamine while she was pregnant.

Worsham said Aiwohi is a recovering drug addict who has not had a "dirty" urine analysis since her son's birth, who is now employed as a drug counselor herself and who has worked hard to be a good mother to the child she delivered after Treyson's death, as well as to the four children she had before Treyson was born.

On the day of his birth at Kaiser Medical Center, Treyson tested positive for methamphetamine, according to authorities, and Child Protective Services intake workers were notified, as required by state law. The following evening, on July 16, the baby and his mother were discharged.

Sometime during the early morning hours of July 17, the baby died.

Goodhue said the mother told an investigator for the medical examiner's office that she had breast-fed the child shortly after arriving home on July 16 and again at 1:30 a.m. on July 17. He was dead by 6 a.m., Goodhue said.

Goodhue said it was possible that at least part of the methamphetamine was delivered to the baby after his birth — in the breast milk.

But other medical authorities have said that breast milk does not flow freely enough within two days after birth to deliver a toxic dose of the drug. Methamphetamine delivered to the fetus through the mother's body before birth, however, can remain in the child's body for 72 hours, they said.

"The levels in his blood at autopsy could have come from pre-birth exposure," Goodhue said yesterday. "However, some might have come from postnatal, or after birth, exposure."

Either way, he said, "it was virtually impossible for Treyson, a newborn infant, to have ingested the methamphetamine himself."

Goodhue said he carefully examined Treyson for evidence of disease, trauma or anything else that might have contributed to his death, other than the toxic does of methamphetamine. He found nothing.

"We have a clear cause of death from toxic effects of methamphetamine," he said, repeating the conclusion he recorded in the autopsy report.

The toxic level of methamphetamine for an adult is 0.10 micrograms per milliliter of blood. Treyson's was 0.40, Goodhue said.

City Deputy Prosecutor Glenn Kim, who is handling the case against Aiwohi, said yesterday there is no evidence that Aiwohi smoked crystal methamphetamine after the baby was born.

But there is reason to believe that Aiwohi had taken crystal meth earlier in the day on which her son was born, Kim said.

Prosecutors are not saying whether their case will rely exclusively on the mother's prenatal exposure of the child to the drug, or will include the possibility of exposure through breast feeding.

Worsham, Aiwohi's lawyer, said there was some evidence in the case that medical officials in the hospital had allowed Aiwohi to breast-feed Treyson.

Jan Kagehiro, a Kaiser spokeswoman, said that although she was unable to comment on Aiwohi's or any other patient's specific circumstances, doctors and nurses at Kaiser tell mothers who use drugs not to breast-feed.

The charges against Aiwohi were filed just days after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to examine a South Carolina case in which a woman was convicting of poisoning her baby by using cocaine during pregnancy. That baby was stillborn; the conviction was based on South Carolina law, which specifically extends homicide prosecution to cases involving a fetus. Hawai'i laws relate to "a human being who has been born and is alive,'' according to the Hawai'i Penal Code.

The South Carolina conviction was opposed by advocates of drug treatment and by women's rights groups.

Barry Lester, a drug researcher at Brown University who oversees a national study of methamphetamine, part of which is being conducted in Hawai'i, said he was concerned about the effects the two cases would have on meth-addicted moms and meth-exposed babies across the country.

"This is incredible," he said. "It is escalating. Now people are never going to come forward and get treatment."

The Supreme Court's decision not to review the South Carolina case did not play a part in the decision to prosecute Aiwohi, Kim said.

He said he was not aware of the Supreme Court ruling in the South Carolina case until after Aiwohi was indicted on Thursday.

Advertiser courts writer David Waite contributed to this report.

Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com