tagged w/ Memorial Medical Center
-
Louisiana Supreme Court justices on Monday heard arguments about whether to release most of the investigative file compiled by former Attorney General Charles Foti as he probed the deaths at Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina.
The Times-Picayune and CNN sought the records after a state grand jury declined to indict Dr. Anna Pou with murder and conspiracy to commit murder last year. Foti arrested Pou and two nurses in July 2006, saying they killed patients with lethal combinations of morphine and Versed.
Attorneys for Pou and the nurses always denied the allegation, saying they were helping treat very sick people in harsh conditions.
Lori Mince, the attorney for the newspaper and cable network, argued to the justices that the public has a right to know if the investigation conducted by Foti was fair and about the deaths of 34 people at the hospital in the chaotic days after the storm.
"How is the public to look at what was done?" Mince asked.
The public records law shields records from view when criminal litigation is pending or "reasonably anticipated." Mince said a criminal probe is not reasonably anticipated, given that the Orleans Parish district attorney's office has said it will no longer pursue the case, as did Foti after the grand jury rejected pressing charges against Pou.
But Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, who aggressively criticized Foti's probe of Pou during his campaign, argued to the justices that the investigative file needed to be kept closed because an investigation could still occur in the future.
Caldwell noted that there are still three civil lawsuits pending against Pou and the former Memorial hospital owners. These cases could result in information being uncovered that needs to be criminally investigated, he said.
"I agree with the district attorney that the case against Dr. Pou is probably over," Caldwell said. But after the hearing, he said that his office at some point might end up investigating a case of Medicare fraud or cruelty to elderly people as a result of information that eventually comes to light.
But Mince, who was repeatedly pressed by the justices about the possibility of a future criminal indictment by either a New Orleans Parish district attorney or the attorney general's office, said that the public records law only shields records if an investigation is about to happen, not if it can possibly happen.
Pauline Hardin, an attorney for medical employees who were at Memorial and were interviewed by the attorney general's office during the investigation, argued that many of the documents in the investigation are protected by grand jury secrecy.
Her clients talked to the attorney general's office with the expectation the material would be used before a state grand jury and, therefore, shielded from public view, she argued. Louisiana Supreme Court justices on Monday heard arguments about whether to release... more
-
