John Tierney looks further at the decisions by the jury in the Hurwitz trial:
But these jurors bought the prosecution’s argument that medical negligence was a crime. They decided that a doctor’s role as a drug cop was so important that even if he had no criminal motive, he should be sent to prison if a group of laymen looked over his records and decided that they would have done it differently. These jurors worked hard, but they had an impossible job. It’s hard enough for a medical review board of doctors to judge a colleague’s actions when deciding whether to revoke his license. It’s hard enough for medical experts to judge negligence when they pore over all the details in a single malpractice case. This lay jury essentially had to decide 19 malpractice cases at once.
Related posts:
- The Texas stampede of physicians
- The overzealous jury, for the defense
- Hurwitz verdict: "The jurors were confused by the law"
- The sympathy factor trumps medicine
- Jury decision making
- Maybe justice isn’t blind
- Letters to the jury: Look at what your ridiculous award has caused
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So what’s wrong with them having to decide that, even if you agree with Tierney? It doesn’t appear they were anything but thorough in their deliberations. You may not agree with the statutes existing, but that’s not really the jurors role, that’s the legislators.
Anon, the statute says the Dr. is guilty if he knowingly prescribes (criminal intent) for other than a medical ailment (medical reason). The supreme court clarified the statute by saying it is drug dealing as conventially understood. What the jury says they convicted the doctor on is negligence/malpractice. This is not what the CSA statute says. The jury errored in their judgement and have now in effect taken the states’ oversight of medicine to the federal level where no medical board exists. This verdict is so wrong it is scary. I hope the judge throws it out.
The jury didn’t say that at all. Here’s what the jury said, via the article where he quotes one of them:
“The guilty verdicts were not based on a single action or inaction that Dr. Hurwitz took, or that he had a lapse in medical judgment, but instead a continuous, deliberate effort to ignore that his patients were using these drugs recreationally or selling them.”
Looks to me like they found that he did exactly what the statute prohibits.
What is the evidence of a “deliberate” effort? Even without seeing all the evidence in this case, what are some examples of evidence of a “deliberate” effort to ignore something?
I can understand evidence of intent to do something – notes or actions that support one intention to engage in an action, etc. But how do you show that someone deliberately ignored something? How do you conclusively determine that someone deliberately turned a blind eye, vs. being ignorant or oblivious to it? And is being ignorant of it or oblivious to it “deliberate”?
I am not arguing really; I would just like to know some examples, other than something like “well isn’t it obvious?”
Just guessing since I’m not the juror in question, but I’m thinking a more precise term would be “willful ignorance”, which is deliberate.
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