Doctors line up behind Weitzel
Wednesday, August 08, 2001
By Angie Welling
Deseret News staff writer
Doctors nationwide are rallying together to protest the continued
prosecution of psychiatrist Robert Allen Weitzel on charges he
overmedicated and ultimately killed five elderly patients.
But prosecutors say the campaign won't derail plans to prosecute
Weitzel.
A recent rash of letters, phone calls and e-mails to the Utah
Attorney General's Office and to newspapers statewide — the Deseret News
in July printed four letters to the editor regarding Weitzel's case and
reporters received another seven e-mails and numerous telephone calls —
all carry a recurring theme: Prosecuting Weitzel, and doctors like him,
will have a chilling effect on pain management across the country.
"This now sends a message to the treatment community: Prescribe
adequately and properly and you will go to jail (at least in Utah),"
retired California physician Michael Rosenblatt wrote to Attorney General
Mark Shurtleff, whose office is assisting Davis County prosecutors in the
case. "This heartbreaking prosecution against a decent, highly competent
psychiatrist could encourage patients to take their own lives because they
are now certain that they will die in horrible pain because of doctor's
(reasonable) fears."
Weitzel was previously convicted of felony manslaughter and
misdemeanor negligent homicide charges and sentenced to serve up to 15
years in prison. However, he was awarded a new trial when 2nd District
Judge Thomas L. Kay determined prosecutors failed to notify defense
attorneys of an expert who might have testified on the defense's behalf.
A new trial date in that case has not yet been set. Weitzel will
appear in state court Thursday for a pretrial conference on the case.
In a statement released by his office, Shurtleff acknowledges
receiving "about a dozen" letters on both sides of Weitzel's case. The
correspondence, however, has done nothing to dissuade Shurtleff's
determination to see the case through.
"Each letter received has been carefully reviewed, but to date the
state has seen nothing that would cause us to change our minds about
proceeding with a trial," according to the statement. "The state believes
that the evidence which will be produced at trial will once again
demonstrate Weitzel's criminal responsibility in the untimely deaths of
the five patients."
Shurtleff also responded to "misapprehensions and fears" reflected
in the letters, saying they are "not based on the facts of this case."
One of the appeals to Shurtleff came from the Association of
American Physicians and Surgeons, which urged the attorney general to halt
Weitzel's upcoming second jury trial.
"Juries do not practice medicine. Physicians do," Tucson, Ariz.,
internist Jane Orient wrote on behalf of the organization. "This approach
inevitably will have a profound chilling effect on the prescription of
comfort measures for patients."
In an interview with the Deseret News, Orient said such criminal
prosecution "strikes terror into the hearts" of physicians everywhere.
"It becomes 'Why should I put my life and my liberty on the line to
do this?' " Orient said. "For the profession, I think what happens to
(Weitzel) affects every doctor in the country."
Weitzel's patients — Ennis Alldredge, 83; Ellen Anderson, 91; Mary
R. Crane, 72; Judith Larsen, 93; and Lydia M. Smith, 90 — all died within
a 16-day period in December 1995 and January 1996. Weitzel was serving as
the head of the Davis Hospital and Medical Center's geriatric-psychiatric
unit, where the patients had been transferred after they reportedly
exhibited disruptive behavior at other long-term-care facilities.
Weitzel, and many medical professionals who have reviewed the
patients' medical charts on Weitzel's Web site, maintain the patients were
terminally ill and were receiving end-of-life "comfort" care.
"When you treat patients who are seriously ill, eventually they will
pass, and they will pass under his care," said Rosenblatt, who practiced
medicine and prescribed narcotics for 27 years before retiring.
Prosecutors and family members of Weitzel's patients, however,
maintain the doctor prescribed lethal doses of morphine to otherwise
healthy patients. None of the cases involved end-of-life care, they say.
"None of the five patients who died had pain-producing findings,
such as cancer or fresh fractures on autopsy," according to the attorney
general's statement. "Weitzel's own admission notes on each of the
patients included plans to discharge them back to the nursing home in a
few weeks, after stabilizing their psychiatric conditions."
In a letter to the editor published Aug. 1 in the Deseret News,
Carolyn Smith Buhman disputes contentions that her mother, Lydia Smith,
was in need of any type of pain management.
"My mother was physically healthy for her age, had a life expectancy
of several more years according to testimony in Weitzel's first trial, and
was seen daily and loved by her family," Buhman wrote. "She played the
piano, visited other patients, walked without aid and was full of life
before Weitzel's care."
Buhman continues, "Five victims in just over two weeks in a unit of
only 10 patients that had only one death in the previous two years screams
of wrongdoing."
But both Rosenblatt and Orient say it doesn't.
"Clusters don't demonstrate guilt, they occur in nature. Sometimes
it just happens," Rosenblatt said.
Orient called the increased death rate a "statistical fluke," saying
"every doctor that practices medicine has probably noticed" a cluster at
one time or another in his career.
© 2001 Deseret News Publishing Company
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