Ogden Standard Examiner Opinion
Constitutional rights eroded in Weitzel case
Wed, July 25, 2001 00:00:00
It is frightening to see how the Constitution of the United States
has been completely disregarded in the double-jeopardy, second trial
of Dr. Robert Weitzel, the Davis County psychiatrist accused of
murdering six* elderly patients with overdoses of morphine.
The Davis County Attorney's office withheld exculpatory evidence
that Dr. Weitzel's pain relief prescriptions of morphine met the
national standard of medical care and that the morphine prescribed
did not, in fact, kill any of those patients. Other causes of death,
such as heart attack and lung failure, ultimately ended those
patients' lives.
I applaud Judge Thomas L. Kay for having the courage to grant Dr.
Weitzel a new trial due to prosecutorial misconduct in the first
trial.
It is not constitutional to be tried for the same crime twice. Can
the Utah legal system put Dr. Weitzel on trial for the alleged
murder of six patients by over-prescribing morphine after losing the
first case due to the prosecutors' misconduct, then re-try Dr.
Weitzel a second time for diverting 22 prescriptions of morphine for
his own use, when the same morphine was supposed to have taken the
lives of those patients he was originally accused of murdering?
This creative jurisprudence erodes every citizen's right to be
treated as innocent until proven guilty, lawfully.
Scott Pedersen
Salem
Copyright ©2001, Ogden Publishing Corporation
*Note: There were five patients in the "murder" case.
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