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Criminal Law/Medical Malpractice: Court Strikes Down Murder Conviction of Physician Where Inappropriate Care Led to Patient's Death
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2021
Extract
On March 29,2000, in U.S. v. Wood, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held that a physician cannot be convicted of murder simply for adopting, in an emergency setting, a risky course of treatment intended to prolong life that, when carried out, effectively hastened death. Finding the government's evidence flawed, based on several evidentiary errors and an erroneous denial of a motion for judgment of acquittal on murder charges, the court reversed the conviction of involuntary manslaughter and ordered a new trial.
Virgil Dykes, an 86-year-old man, was suffering from severe abdominal pain when he arrived at the Veterans Administration hospital in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on February 5, 1994.
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References
207 F.3d 1222 (10th Cir. 2000).Google Scholar
Id. at 1232.Google Scholar
Id. at 1234.Google Scholar
Id. at 1237, citing Fed. R. Evid. 403.Google Scholar
See Van Grunsven, P.R., “Medical Malpractice or Criminal Mistake?: An Analysis of Past and Current Criminal Prosecutions for Clinical Mistakes and Fatal Errors,” DePaul Journal of Health Care Law, Fall 1997, at 48–49.Google Scholar
See BNA Health Law Reporter 9 (2000) 523–524.Google Scholar
See, for example, BNA Health Law Reporter, id. at 523; Alpers, A., “Criminal Act or Palliative Care? Prosecutions Involving the Care of the Dying,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 26 (1998) at 308.Google Scholar