0
No Case Against Nurses in Katrina Deaths
By MARY FOSTER
Associated Press Writer
July 3rd, 2007
QUOTE:
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The district attorney has dropped the case against two nurses in the deaths of four patients at a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina.
Nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, along with a third woman, Dr. Anna Pou, were arrested last summer and booked with being principal to second-degree murder - which carries a mandatory life prison sentence.
"We're very pleased. We thought this was how it would end," Landry's attorney John DiGiulio said Tuesday. "We're cautiously optimistic that when it's all over no one will be charged - including Dr. Pou."
State Attorney General Charles Foti claimed they killed four people with a "lethal cocktail" at Memorial Medical Center during the chaotic conditions after the August 2005 storm. Lawyers for the three said they acted heroically, staying to treat patients rather than evacuating. No charges were ever filed.
Budo and Landry had been compelled to testify last month before a grand jury, under legal guidelines that precluded their testimony from being used against them. They waived their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Assistant District Attorney Michael Morales, in a filing with the Louisiana Supreme Court, had stated he would refuse second-degree murder charges, essentially dropping the case against Budo and Landry, once they testified....
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KAT...EMPLATE=DEFAULT
NAWLINSGIRL
