Jurors in former VA doctor’s trial recoil from graphic videos

The videos were too much.

Some jurors began to cry. Others fidgeted. And then, after several minutes, none could continue watching the homemade films that former Veterans Affairs emergency room doctor Craig Morgenstern allegedly made of himself sexually assaulting boys.

Morgenstern did not refute that he made the films during the second day of his federal criminal trial. His lawyer has not mounted any successful challenges or disclosed a defense strategy to fight the prosecution’s potential 45 witnesses and more than 500 pieces of evidence.

The 47-year-old Morgenstern rejected an offer before the trial started that called for him to plead guilty to the federal government’s 35-count indictment in exchange for a five-decade prison term. Instead, he has put his future into the hands of an Eastern Washington jury visibly reviled by the videos. Several removed their glasses to wipe away tears and glanced at parents sitting stoically in the front row as Morgenstern buried his reddened face in handfuls of tissues and even sobbed as the evidence played.

And there’s much more to follow: Prosecutors haven’t yet called FBI forensics experts and agents who say they have collected more than 1 million child pornography pictures and videos he kept on his computers.

Nor have prosecutors put parents on the stand to testify how Morgenstern earned their trust with promises of mentoring their sons with his intellect, kindness and important work as an emergency room doctor.

And they haven’t called the six boys he is accused of drugging, sexually assaulting and filming repeatedly from 2008 until his arrest in October 2014.

The videos shown Tuesday were visible only to the jurors and not to observers in the gallery, to protect the children depicted.

The videos featured background music and the sounds of Morgenstern breathing and performing sex acts on the sedated boys. He set up a series of studio lights and cameras to record the episodes. The flashes from the cameras taking still shots during the videos illuminated the grimaced faces of jurors.

At one point during a five-minute video clip, defense attorney Bryan Whitaker asked the judge to turn off the video “since the jury has stopped watching.”

At least two mothers of alleged victims had to leave the courtroom as more videos were queued for jury viewing.

Morgenstern had tried to destroy or hide the videos after one of the boys he sexually assaulted, a 13-year-old, escaped his Nine Mile Falls home at 2:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 18, 2014, according to prosecutors.

The boy called for help as he ran into the care of unsuspecting neighbors of Morgenstern.

Investigators with the Stevens County Sheriff’s Office then began an investigation that nearly fell apart as they coped with short staffing and delays in obtaining search warrants to seize computers, cameras and other electronic devices used to make and store child pornography.

Morgenstern used the delay – about 33 hours between the time deputies first encountered him the night of the boy’s call for help and when they obtained a formal search warrant – to remove electronic equipment and other evidence from the home, according to court records.

Much of it was found – either in his car or in trash bins by people with no ties to the case, according to court records.

He was arrested within days of the boy’s call after investigators turned the equipment over to John Schlosser, a digital forensic specialist with the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, who found pornography on computer hard drives.

Meanwhile, a urine sample given by the boy the morning after the alleged sexual assault showed that he had prescription sedatives called benzodiazapines in his system, according to court records.

The trial is scheduled to continue Wednesday.