The Air Force nurse accused of killing three civilian patients at Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio was acquitted Saturday of murder charges. Scott Huddleston writes:
In a swift verdict Saturday, a military judge acquitted Capt. Michael Fontana, an Air Force nurse being tried on charges of murdering three patients.
“Capt. Fontana, this court finds you, of all charges and specifications, not guilty,” Col. William Burd announced soon after closing arguments in a five-day court-martial at Lackland AFB.
The verdict ended a nearly 16-month ordeal for Fontana, 36, who works at Wilford Hall Medical Center, the Air Force’s largest hospital.
Fontana said he never dishonored “my God, my country, my family or my patients’ families.”
WOAI interviewed the husband of Dorothy Gray, a stroke victim treated by Fontana, and he was angered by the verdict.
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The case involved three patients treated by Fontana. But only Gray was the alleged victim of a homicide, according to an autopsy report by the Bexar County Medical Examiner. The Air Force pressed forward with murder charges for all three patients, which opened the door to testimony from other family members. The daughter-in-law of one patient supported Fontana, according to this KENS story.
Here’s what Fontana’s defense team argued:
Fontana’s defense team and expert witnesses challenged whether the pain-killing drugs caused the patients’ deaths, saying the case was circumstantial.
They criticized doctors’ medication orders as unclear and questioned the decision by the staff, in consultation with family members, to remove Gray from a ventilator without giving her time to recover.
Fontana’s civilian lawyers, Carol Birch and Elizabeth Higginbotham, said the wing commander, Maj. Gen. Tom Travis, should have continued the internal evaluation of records and medical evidence, rather than putting their client through a lengthy criminal process.
“He should have asked, and he should have reviewed it,” Birch said.
Travis had no comment after the verdict beyond a statement from the Wilford Hall’s 59th Medical Wing, which stated that “our medical professionals had reason to believe that criminal conduct had occurred.”
Here’s my first blog post that links to past coverage of the case. There are also links to primary documents, such as the summary of Gray’s autopsy report, and an investigative report about her death.
