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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

What was the gender and racial makeup of the Doctor Anna Pou grand jury in New Orleans parish?

Dr. Anna Pou was charged with homocide of nine patients in a hospital during Katrina. The charge was that she alledgedly injected nine patients with massive amounts of morphine. The patients were alive that morning, but dead by five pm.
Answers:
Grand jury refuses to indict Dr. Anna Pou
Posted by The Times-Picayune July 24, 2007 10:18PM
By Gwen Filosa and John Pope
Closing one of the most sensational chapters in post-Katrina New Orleans, Dr. Anna Pou said Tuesday that she fell to her knees and thanked God when she learned that a grand jury had refused to charge her with murdering patients in dark, fetid Memorial Medical Center in the nightmarish days after the hurricane struck on Aug. 29, 2005.
Speaking at an afternoon news conference in a voice choked with emotion, Pou did not smile or gloat over the end of an ordeal that began when she and two nurses were arrested a year and a week ago.
Speaking at the Marriot Convention Center hotel, a tearful Dr. Anna Pou speaks to the media about the no true bill rendered for her by the Grand Jury Tuesday, July 24, 2007."This is not a triumph, but a moment of remembrance for those who lost their lives during the storm and those who stayed at their posts to serve those in need," she said, reading from a brief prepared statement.
Pou still faces four civil suits in connection with the deaths, but her colleagues cheered the end of the criminal case. So did the Louisiana State Medical Society and the American Medical Association, both of which issued statements saying Pou, who never was charged in the deaths, should not have been arrested.
Pou "courageously performed her duties as a physician under the most challenging and horrific conditions," the state society said in its statement. "The decisions she made were in the best interests of the patients."
Arrested with Pou, a head and neck surgeon who specializes in reconstructive surgery, were nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo. State Attorney General Charles Foti accused the three of murder in the deaths of nine patients in LifeCare Hospital, a section of the Uptown medical center reserved for frail patients. Foti, who contended the three had administered lethal injections of painkillers and sedatives, turned over the case to Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan. The grand jury was sworn in in March, but Jordan said he did not start presenting the case until May.
Originally, the three women were accused of killing four patients, but that number grew to nine. Thirty-four patients were reported to have died before the hospital was evacuated.
Landry and Budo were given immunity in return for their grand jury testimony.
'Not a true bill'
The criminal case came to a dramatic conclusion Tuesday morning in Criminal District Judge Calvin Johnson's courtroom.
First, Johnson read an indictment that accused Pou of helping to kill nine patients. Then he read what Valerie Rogers, the grand jury's forewoman, had written on the back of the indictment paperwork: "Not a true bill," which means the jury refused to charge Pou.
Nine grand jurors must agree to deliver an indictment. Because grand jury proceedings are conducted in secret and participants are forbidden to discuss them, there was no way to determine how the jurors voted.
"I think justice has been served with due process," Jordan said Tuesday. "I think the grand jury did the right thing. The grand jury considered all the evidence -- carefully considered. .陇.陇. They concluded no crime had been committed."
"To me, that's the end of the case, and I hope the attorney general accepts that," said Rick Simmons, Pou's attorney, who appeared with his client at her news conference.
Assistant Attorney General Julie Cullen, who participated in the special grand jury proceedings along with Jordan's prosecutors, Michael Morales and Craig Famularo, left the courthouse at Tulane and Broad with little to say about Pou.
"It's our position that it was homicide," Cullen said.
Asked what would become of Pou's reputation now that the criminal investigation yielded no charge, Cullen said, "I guess that depends on who's considering it."
Defiance grows
Foti's demeanor seemed to change as the day wore on.
Shortly after the failure to indict was announced, he said, "I am very proud of our efforts on behalf of the victims and their families."

Louisiana DA Charles FotiBut by the afternoon, he was defiant, saying the grand jury had erred. He blamed Jordan, saying prosecutors failed to present important witnesses who could have supported a murder indictment. At his own press conference in Baton Rouge, Foti gave reporters lengthy written analyses from medical experts who had concluded the deaths were homicides.
Foti said the grand jury didn't hear from a number of critical experts, including a forensic pathologist. Additionally, he said, Jordan's team presented none of the dead patients' family members to testify.
Foti also said that Pou drew public sympathy via a publicity campaign and that he hasn't forgotten the patients who died at Memorial.
"You know, one's reputation in the community does not shelter one from potential illegal activities," he said. "No one talks about the victims. The victims. Nine people that died. It is the duty of the attorney general to represent these victims."
Foti said the patients could have been saved.
"At 11 o'clock on Thursday, Sept. 1, while the hospital was being evacuated, both by boat and helicopters, all nine of those people were alive," he said. "By 5 o'clock, when the last person was removed from the hospital, all nine of those people were dead."
Simmons countered that Foti's investigation was a misguided attempt to blame medical personnel for a disaster caused by government failures.
"The certificates of death for these individual patients should read, at least, 'abandoned by their government,'陇" Simmons said. "Anybody with a television set knows the cause of death."
The Grand Jury refused to file the charges against her.
Grand Juries are sealed, usually, so we probably won't know who was on it.
You know what, all that doesn't matter. If you was in New Orleans when Katrina hit, and as sick as those people were, you'd be dead too. One way or another. They blaming doctors and nurses for deaths that were caused by mother nature. Instead of trying to rebuild this city, folks trynna make money off the different situations that went down during Katrina. What about all the residents that's still trying 2 come home? They should focus on that.

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