DrugBuyers.Com: Robert Weitzel, MD - Case, Web, and letter

Subject: Second defense day

Dr. Kerry Cranmer testified that the patients were treated appropriately, that the psychoactive medications were in line with patient symptoms and caused no problems for them, but were certainly needed, and that occasional sedation was expected and actually part of the process of finding the correct combination of drugs. He testified that there was no negative effect from these medications. He showed that once the patients' families decided on a course of palliative care, that morphine was appropriately ordered and administered, and that no patient was harmed by the use of opiates for end-of-life analgesia.

The prosecution didn't lay a glove on him. When state lawyer Melvin Wilson tried to trip the doctor up and put him on the spot by saying, "You said (insert such-and-such) in your expert letter; can you show us in the chart where you found that?" the defense on re-direct quickly went straight to the section of the chart that the doctor couldn't immediately find. (How can you expect anyone to memorize over 1000 pages of charting, and go to it immediately? I have, but I'm the exception in this crazy case.) Wilson ended up looking foolish and petty.

Dr. Keela Herr presented the perspective of a nursing professor, and did so in a manner that clearly engaged the jury. She cut to the quick of the matter: the patients were very ill, obviously in pain, and that when the families opted for cessation of useless interventions and institution of palliative care, that it was appropriate, compassionate, and reasonable to give whatever dose of opiate needed to ablate pain and suffering. She indicted the opiate withholding nurse for failure to turn over her responsibility for pain relief to another nurse or her supervisor, or informing the attending physician of this breach of care and failure to follow the dictates of the patients' surrogates.

The state lawyers didn't lay a glove on her.

Dr. Sharon Weinstein presented the neurology perspective. She demolished the state lawyer's argument that I "weakened them with those psychiatric drugs, then finished them off with morphine, by pointing out that the vital signs of all of the patients stayed consistently and stably within normal parameters, even when the patients were on high doses of psychoactives and/or opiates.

I'd like to see the state lawyers even try to punch Dr. Weinstein. She is one determined and resolute expert. I fear for the prosecution lawyer's basal ganglia if and when she is contradicted.

The state lawyers are seen by the jury to be misguided and wrong. I hope.

Tomorrow Dr. Weinstein's testimony will be finished, and Dr. Fine should be on the stand by mid-morning. We hope and believe that there will be no rebuttal by the state after we rest our portion of the case, sometime tomorrow afternoon. If all goes well, closing arguments will be Friday morning. I will keep you informed.

Yours,

Robert

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