Foti sued by doctor accused in Memorial Hospital deaths
Times-Picayune July 16, 2007Dr. Anna Pou on Monday filed a lawsuit against Louisiana Attorney General
Charles Foti Jr., one year after he accused her of killing four patients at
a New Orleans hospital during the desperate, sweltering days after Hurricane
Katrina struck.
Pou, 51, was among the medical professionals stranded in the sweltering,
flooded city without power for four days at Memorial Medical Center in 2005.
Despite the mandatory evacuation issued by the city, Pou and her colleagues
stuck it out amid the disastrous conditions, as the federal response lagged
on for almost a week.
"This abandonment led to triage conditions, resulting in the deaths of
patients who 'could not be saved,'" Pou's attorney wrote in the suit.
Pou is also demanding the state provide her with a civil defense in the
mounting lawsuits by patients' families.
"The state of Louisiana abandoned Dr. Pou and others during Hurricane
Katrina and now she is being abandoned again by the state's denial of a
civil defense," wrote attorney Rick Simmons, on behalf of the New Orleans
doctor.
Last year, Foti accused Pou and two nurses at Memorial of second-degree
murder in the deaths of four patients ages 61, 66, 89 and 90, saying the
four were deliberately given a "lethal cocktail" of prescription medicines
so that medical personnel could end their frail lives instead of evacuating
them.
While an Orleans Parish Grand Jury is deciding whether to charge her
criminally in the matter, Pou on Monday fired back against Foti, saying he
is playing politics with the dead of Katrina, along with her career.
Pou is being made the scapegoat for government's failure to respond to the
Katrina disaster, her attorneys said.
"The real cause of loss of life is the government's abandonment of the
patients and the doctors. There can be no doubt that this will bet the
central issue in the defense of this matter...The Attorney General himself
has political interest in the indictment of Dr. Pou based upon the
controversy stirred by his own improper and unethical activities in
arresting Dr. Pou," the lawsuit states.
Foti's office did not return phone messages seeking comment by Monday
evening.
Two Lawsuits Filed
Pou's attorneys filed two lawsuits Monday in Baton Rouge state court.
The first is against the state's Office of Risk Management, demanding the
agency provide her with a legal defense against civil lawsuits accusing her
of negligence under the state medical malpractice law.
The second lawsuit lambastes Foti for his office's investigation into
Memorial deaths, and claims that Foti is in "a conflict of interest" to
determine whether Pou deserves a state funded legal defense. Pou wants a
Baton Rouge judge to disqualify Foti from weighing in on the state's
decision.
Another conflict, the lawsuit claims, is that one of Foti's attorneys has
been present at Orleans Parish grand jury proceedings according to documents
filed at the Louisiana Supreme Court. The Louisiana Code of Criminal
Procedure prohibits a government attorney who "has personal interest" in the
case from attending Grand Jury proceedings.
After the arrests, Foti said he had turned over his investigation to Orleans
Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan's office, leaving local prosecutors to
take the heat of an explosive case.
"It is in the interest of the State of Louisiana, through its chief law
enforcement official, to shift the blame to Dr. Pou and other medical
professionals thus limiting the state's exposure and raising an obvious
conflict of interest between the Attorney General's Office and Dr. Pou,"
wrote Simmons on behalf of the doctor.
Foti, the lawsuit says, "has vested interest in the indictment of Dr. Pou to
salvage his credibility as a public official, especially" since he is up for
re-election this fall.
Surprise Arrests
Foti, the longtime sheriff in Orleans Parish before winning the state
Attorney General's office in 2003, stunned the region one year ago this week
in announcing his agents had arrested a doctor and two nurses on allegations
of murder.
"This is a homicide; it is not euthanasia," Foti said in 2006 at an
internationally televised news conference announcing the Memorial
investigation. "We're talking about people that pretended that maybe they
were God and they made that decision."
Foti went on to say that his 11-month investigation of memorial was "for
your mother, my mother, father, brother, sister; a loved one. Somebody goes
to the hospital or nursing home and you want to feel that they are safe."
Pou, an ear, nose and throat specialist, and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri
Landry, both of Jefferson Parish, were arrested July 17, 2006, and booked
with four counts of second-degree murder each.
Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan's office in June refused to
charge Budo and Landry, in order to compel them to testify before the grand
jury reviewing the patient deaths at Memorial.
When a witness is reluctant to testify before a grand jury, prosecutors can
compel testimony by granting immunity, essentially making moot a person's
need to invoke the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Defense attorneys for the three women contended that the there was an
agreement with Foti's office that if arrests were to come, the women would
be allowed to surrender. Instead, all three were arrested and booked at
Orleans Parish prison, with mug shots released to the press.
Pou was at her Baton Rouge home, still in scrubs having performed surgery,
when Foti's investigators came for her at 9 p.m. On July 17, 2006. She was
taken to the East Baton Rouge jail, then driven to Orleans Parish Prison for
booking.
The next morning, Foti held hid news conference. Two days later, the lawsuit
says, Foti held a $500-a-person fundraiser at the Windsor Court Hotel in New
Orleans.
Supporters of Pou plan to hold a rally tonight at 6 p.m. at City Park's
Peristyle.
"Just as with her heroic nurse colleagues, Dr. Pou deserves immunity and to
be immediately cleared of all accusations," said Cathy Green, co-founder of
Memorial Nurses Fund, created to help pay legal costs for nurses Landry and
Budo.
