'60 Minutes' to Feature Weitzel
Sunday, March 3, 2002
BY STEPHEN HUNT
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Psychiatrist Robert Allen Weitzel -- accused of
killing five elderly patients in Davis County with
morphine overdoses -- is scheduled to appear on CBS's
"60 Minutes" tonight, along with two independent
physicians who say the patients were in pain and near
death.
"If this is balanced and in-depth, then the more
light cast on this thing the better," Weitzel told The
Tribune on Friday. "I'm hopeful this will get the
medical community, and the community at large, focused
on what really happened."
Charged with five counts of murder, Weitzel was
convicted by a jury two years ago of lesser counts of
manslaughter and negligent homicide. But the judge
granted Weitzel a new trial after discovering that
prosecutors had failed to disclose knowledge of a
pro-defense medical expert. That judge was subsequently
removed from the case because of "an appearance" that he
was biased against the prosecution.
Weitzel, 45, said Friday he is waiting tables and
working with his new attorneys pending his second trial,
which has not been scheduled.
The five deaths occurred over a 16-day period
between December 1995 and January 1996 at the Davis
Hospital and Medical Center in Layton, where Weitzel ran
a geriatric/psychiatric unit designed for the short-term
treatment of loud and combative victims of senile
dementia.
Davis County prosecutors declined to be interviewed
by "60 Minutes" because the homicide case is ongoing.
Deputy Davis County Attorney Steve Major said Friday
that his office instead provided legal documents and
phone numbers of family members of the alleged victims.
CBS spokesman Kevin Tedesco said no family members
appear in the 13-minute segment.
Major issues at Weitzel's trial included whether the
patients were actually in pain and needed morphine, and
whether the patients were on death's door or relatively
healthy upon admission to Weitzel's unit. Two doctors
who examined the patients' medical charts for "60
Minutes" sided with Weitzel.
Said Ira Byock, who directs a program studying
end-of-life care: "If you look at these charts, several
of them had lost large amounts of weight. One of them, I
think, clearly had pneumonia on admission and was
clearly dying. These are somewhat common conditions that
people die of."
And Linda Finke, president of the International
Society of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing and
End-of-life Care, said, "These people were clearly in
agony. The nurses have recorded how, over and over
again, they were moaning, they were groaning. Some of
them were even saying they were in pain."
Former Assistant Utah Attorney General Elizabeth
Bowman, a former nurse who was part of the Weitzel
prosecution team and is now in private practice, said
pain killers were not needed because elderly people feel
pain less than others.
"If you or I have a broken bone, we're very likely
to be in a great deal of pain," she told "60 Minutes."
"An elderly person can have a fracture and not be aware
of it."
Weitzel said during the television interview: "We
look at them and they look like they're suffering. And
these people, these lawyers and so-called experts, just
brush that off and say, 'Oh, that's just anxiety,' or,
'No, they weren't in pain,' or, 'It could have been
something else.'
"If they look like they're in pain, you ought to
treat the pain. It's heartless and it's wrong to refuse
to take care of people at the end of their life."
© Copyright 2002, The Salt Lake Tribune