No charges filed against Dr. Pou in Memorial Case

Source: nola.com (the New Orleans Times-Picayune)

An Orleans Parish Grand jury Tuesday refused to indict Dr. Anna Pou, the New Orleans doctor who rode out Hurricane Katrina at Memorial Medical Center in 2005.




Read more: http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/07/no_charges_filed_against_dr_po.html

---

took them long enough to clear the name of this dedicated doctor

I hope that the voters toss his butt out of office.

Oops. I see it was the attorney general, not the DA.

Brown, Chertoff, Bush.

he speaks w. forked tongue out of both sides of his mouth

i suppose you saw this about the st. rita's case:

The motion notes that in a $200 billion civil lawsuit filed on behalf of the state, Foti places the blame squarely on the Army Corps of Engineers, accusing it of "gross dereliction of nearly unprecedented proportions" that resulted in more than 1,500 deaths.
But in the negligent-homicide case against Salvador and Mabel Mangano, who ran St. Rita's nursing home near Poydras, Foti's prosecutors have fought unsuccessfully to bar defense attorneys from blaming the deaths at the nursing home on the corps and other governmental entities.

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/07/foti_should_be_dismissed_from.html

by asking the reporter in New Orleans if Dr. Pou will be going back to work at Memorial?
The hospital has been closed down.

I'm not at all surprised by the ruling. I worked as an RN in New Orleans for years, and I know how badly they treat their nurses. I can just see them placing ALL the blame on the nurses; that's what they always do.

charges against the Nurses were dropped a couple of weeks ago. The AG wanted them to testify against the Doctor to the grand jury but obviously that didn't work too well. This is a very good decision all around.

i am glad this evil strategem failed

foti is quantum leaps more capable and competent then Eddie Jordan.

They gave immunity to the nurses to try to get them to roll over on Anna Pou. After they agreed to testify, they told the truth to the grand jury, and the grand jury no-billed them.

This is a huge story here in New Orleans, and even though most of the community is knee-jerk Catholic anti-choice, anti-euthanasia, she has LOTS of support here and this will be greeted warmly. Most people also realize how important it is to acquit her to send the right message to the medical community we need so badly. That we support them and won't persecute them so that a vulnerable Attorney General can toss religious red bait to the wing nuts right before an election.

The DA, Charles Foti, is now in DEEP political shit. NO ONE likes him now except about 1/2 of the 25%ers. Even most religious wingnuts knew - after a week hand ventilating those poor, critically ill people in a powerless, hot, fetid hospital long out of most drugs, after the firemen had came and left - that humane death was the only option. What else could have been done?

Source: ap

A grand jury Tuesday declined to indict Dr. Anna Pou, the surgeon accused of killing four seriously ill patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Pou and two nurses were arrested last summer after Attorney General Charles Foti's investigation concluded they gave four patients a "lethal cocktail" at Memorial Medical Center amid the chaotic conditions that followed the August 2005 storm.

Assistant District Attorney Michael Morales, who conducted the grand jury hearings, had asked the grand jurors to return one charge of second-degree murder and nine of murder conspiracy.

The grand jurors sat calmly while the judge read the possible charges and each response of "no true bill." Morales said afterward that he could not comment on the decision.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/07/24/katrina.doctor.ap/index.html

---

Now why don't they go after the real murderers instead?

because there was no way I'd second guess Dr. Pou. I would hope if my family member had been in the hell Chertoff's stupidity in sealing the city off provided that Dr. Pou had been around to order and/or administer the morphine and anxiolytics that would make his/her death easier, even if that death were hastened slightly by the drugs. Death had already been made inevitable by an agency that treated a natural disaster like a contagion and refused to let help and supplies into the city.

Dr. Pou is the heroine in this unspeakable tragedy put into motion by bureaucratic idiocy from incompetent men. Morales is scum for holding anything beyond an inquest.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2005/09/aid_for_katrina_victims_spurne.html
>>>>"Aid for Katrina Victims Spurned
"I hope people don't play politics," said President Bush in the hurricane's aftermath. But that message didn't get through at the State Department, which is playing politics by continuing to ignore Cuba's offer to send 34 tons of aid and the services of 1,586 doctors"
-------------------------------------------------------------------


Much of the post-Katrina suffering and death was directly due to the utter indifference and incompetence of the Bush administration. As long as I live I hope I never forget the horror of watching fellow Americans stranded on their rooftops and in the hellish sports arena, and left to die in third-world conditions while that idiot played air guitar, ate birthday cake, campaigned, and loafed in Texas and California in the midst of the catastrophe.

A New Orleans surgeon accused of killing four patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will not face trial, a grand jury has decided.
Prosecutors in New Orleans had sought to try cancer surgeon Anna Pou for murder and conspiracy to murder.

Dr Pou denied using drugs to kill patients at Memorial Medical Center after storm waters broke levees and flooded much of the city.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6914462.stm

I firmly believe that, if she did what they allege (which is highly likely), she did the right thing. Those patients were too ill to move easily, there was no power, they were bagging them by hand, and they were going to die when the staff was evacuated, as the plan seemed to be at the time.

I found her lawyer once. I'm going to find him again so we can send some money for her legal fees. She needs to be supported.

i'd definitely pitch in a few bucks for a true Katrina heroine.