Medical professionals are charged with saving lives. However, on occasions, hospitals provide the cover for killings.
Earlier this month, a Texas nurse was convicted of capital murder over the deaths of four patients. Prosecutors said he deliberately injected the patients with air after heart surgeries.
A report on NBC News stated the jury in Smith County deliberated for an hour before finding William George Davis from Hallsville guilty of capital murder. Prosecutors said the crime involved multiple victims. They are seeking the death penalty.
The jury heard evidence that Davis injected air into the arteries of four patients. They underwent heart surgery at the Christus Trinity Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler. NBC News reported the patients who were recovering in 2017 and 2018 suffered from neurological problems and died.
An expert witness, Dr. William Yarbrough, a pulmonologist and professor of internal medicine from Dallas, told the jury how injecting air into the arterial system of the brain leads to brain injury and proves fatal.
Yarbrough viewed brain scans and determined the presence of air in the arterial system of the victims’ brains. He said he had never previously seen the condition in his decades in medicine.
Prosecutor Chris Gatewood said during closing arguments that Davis “liked to kill people.” The defense said the hospital had issues and Davis was a scapegoat.
Security footage was played during the trial of Davis entering the room of one of the patients. The patient’s heart monitor alarm sounded just three minutes later. He died later from the injection. Davis will remain in custody at the Smith County Jail on an $8.75 million bail bond.
Throughout history, medical professionals have been convicted of murders. Michael Swango, a medical student, took numerous residencies at hospitals across the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. He would both give patients overdoses of drugs to kill them and poison coworkers with arsenic. He was apprehended in 1997 and is serving a term of life in prison.
Dr. Harold Shipman, an English general practitioner, is Britain’s most prolific serial killer. He killed as many as 250 of his patients, most of them elderly women, by injecting them with morphine. He was sentenced to life in prison and killed himself in his prison cell.
The stakes are high in murder cases in Texas. The state executes more people than any other. If you have been charged with a serious crime of this nature, you should contact a criminal defense lawyer as soon as possible. Call us at (214) 720-9552.
