Prosecutors face a legal hurdle as they pursue 25 murder charges against an Ohio doctor accused of essentially using his colleagues to kill patients.
Dr. William Husel, center, pleads not guilty in Columbus, Ohio, to murder charges in the deaths of 25 patients.
If the case goes to trial, legal experts said, a key challenge for prosecutors would be proving that Husel ordered doses without medical justification and intending to cause deaths, even if the drugs were actually administered by a nurse or other colleague. It's one of the biggest cases of its kind against an American healthcare professional, and it appears to a far less cut-and-dried case than that of a nurse in Germany who was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for murdering 85 patients by personally administering drug overdoses.“The question is, what was going through their mind when they did it?” University of Dayton law professor Thaddeus Hoffmeister said.
Simmons and Hoffmeister said they found it interesting that no other medical workers were charged in the case despite being aware of or involved in the high doses.Other employees from the Columbus-area Mount Carmel Health System were treated as witnesses and aren't being prosecuted, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien said.
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