Dr. Jayant Patel is flying out of Australia as a free man. It is hard to reconcile this with the fact that few years ago he was painted as public enemy number one. It was alleged that large number of patients died or maimed due to his medical negligence. He was given a title of Dr. Death even before single sentence was spoken by his defense.

Medical/Surgical practice by their seer nature involves expected and unexpected death or complication. If a patient dies due to or in spite of treatment it does not make it manslaughter. Every society strives to minimize such occurrences.

The shock in case of Dr. Patel case comes from how we were lead to believe that Dr. Patel was some criminal on loses. He came to Australia to kill or maim innocent patients. He was society’s enemy number one. And all we need to do was to get him in Australia from US and throw him in justice system and he will be locked for life. It was supposed to be an open and shut case. Prosecution has so much evidence that they were having difficulty choosing which criminal act to try him to lock him away! Disbelief stems from the wide gap between the expectation and reality.

~2~

~2~ As it turns out the crown attempted four trials. In the very first trial they started prosecuting several manslaughter and grievous body harm based on allegation that Dr. Patel’s performed surgery incompetently. However, on 43rd day of 58-day trial they realized that they did not have ability to prove incompetence in Dr. Patel’s surgery. So in last 15 days they alleged that surgery was not indicated therefore performing the surgery was a criminal offense.

Of course jury heard too many allegations in first 43 days that would have never been allowed had the trial conducted to focus on indication. Also by bunching several charges prosecution was able to convince the jury that Dr. Patel was a bad surgeon.

During the first trial Dr. Patel was still recovering from massive public anger against him, even those who wanted to speak up for Dr. Patel, chose to remain quiet. Judge should have declared this a mistrial but he did not. Prosecution was able to get a guilty verdict and Dr. Patel was sentenced to seven years.

While there was no public outcry many in legal and medical profession were aghast. What if to morrow every physician who has few deaths or complication is called upon to defend himself or herself? This was the first time in recent history of Australia that a physician was charged with manslaughter for performing the operation that he believed was indicated after an informed consent.

Those of us who have been in clinical medicine know too well. Only person who never has unexpected mortality or complication is the physician who has never practiced medicine. Even with best of our efforts we do encounter death or complication. Who is going to decide if a given death is mortality?

Several attorneys agreed to help Dr. Patel (pro-bono if necessary) to get the justice. They were mindful of the prevailing strong sentiment against Dr. Patel and therefore the challenge of finding an impartial juror. Their first step was to challenge the first trial.

~3~
They succeeded in overturning the verdict in Aug 2012. High Court of Australia overturned the verdict stating, “there was miscarriage of justice when prosecution changed the statute under which they were charging Dr. Patel on the 43rd out of 58 day trial.” Judge also ordered that each charge be triad separately to avoid contamination of evidence that happened during the first trial.

This was the chance for DPP to accept the fact that they did not have enough evidence to prove their case in a criminal court. They had known it all along. That is why they switched the statute on 43rd day. Once again they chose to keep up the strong façade and Tony Moynihan declared, “ upon reviewing the evidence we are confident that we can get a conviction of Dr. Patel and new trials are in interest of justice.”

Upon reviewing all possible charges DPP decided to start with manslaughter charges for Mr. Morris. (This was their best hope) The case started cracking right at the beginning. They had to file a brief with the judge outlining the charges and the evidence and how it proved the guilt of Dr. Patel. It turns out that the judge could not make head and tail out of their argument and had to send it back three times for revision. He actually commented that he was embarrassed by the brief submitted.

March 2013 in the case of manslaughter of Mr. Morris, the jury gave a ‘not guilty verdict’ . Mr. Morris an elderly male had already had an episode of massive bleeding from his colon in past. He also sustained another massive bleeding before admission to Dr. Patel. Commonsense approach would have been to remove the colon rather than risk the third massive bleeding (it can cause heart attack). Dr. Patel rightly operated on the patient to save his life. Jury was able to understand that fact and rightly gave a not guilty verdict. You really do not want elderly patients bleeding repeatedly in your surgical ward while surgeon is running one test after the other

I am glad that I won't need to pay for his stay in prison from my tax-money.

Dear V. Mehta,

The law isn't about justice, it's about the law.
And J. Patel hasn't been vindicated or found to be
innocent, he's pleaded guilty to charges
of fraud.

His innocence or guilt is still under question.
This isn't a question of a doctor who's lost one
patient (for whatever reason). This is a doctor who's
lost 5 . And that kind of a loss warrants answers,
especially for the families. Seven counts of fraud
also brings into question the doctor's reputation.

Would you trust your family's health and well-being
to a doctor with this sort of record?

I know that I certainly wouldn't and I think that most
people would agree with me.

~4~
DPP had a chance to call it quits at this stage after losing their best case. However, Tony Moynihan pressed on charging Dr. Patel with Grievous body harm for operating on Mr. Vowel. This elderly man already had previous surgery for colon cancer and he came back with polyps in remainder of colon. Of course we can biopsy them repeatedly to look for cancer. But with his family history Mr. Vowel was at much higher risk developing colon cancer and that too much more aggressive type. Dr. Patel noted this and Mr. Vowel opted for never having to deal with colon cancer. Therefore, he underwent removal of total colon and ileostomy. Prosecution argued that he could have saved last portion of colon to avoid the ileostomy. However, most surgeons do not like to leave any colon because of the risk of cancer in remaining portion. As a matter of fact Mr. Vowel’s sister who was healthy at that time has passed away due to colon cancer since then. All the differences aside, Total colectomy for a hereditary cancer is one of the options.

Jury once again could not give guilty verdict. Majority of jurors were in favor of not guilty but 2-3 jurors refused to give in and after lengthy deliberation they came up with hung jury. Another blow to the prosecution. Of course Tony was not ready to concede the defeat. However, it was obvious that defense was not going to be bullied by the mighty machine of DPP.

3.6 million was the amount spent on the trial from June 2006 to June 2013. More bills are pending. They also have to pay for the amount spent by Dr. Patel during the first trial since it was a mistrial. 9.3 million to the compensation to the patients of Dr. Patel that were paid out to avoid litigation by Premier Beatty. Millions spent on Morris commission and Davis commission. The meter was running and Tony did not have any thing to show for or any hope of getting a conviction.