A jury in Ohio found William Husel not guilty on all counts.
William Husel hugs his wife after he was found not guilty of murder.
Husel was found not guilty on 14 counts of murder in a trial that was delayed for more than a year because of the Covid-19 Pandemic and a change in the prosecution team.
After a week of deliberations, a judge told jurors to keep working after they said they were hopelessly deadlocked.
In June of this year, Husel was indicted by a Franklin County grand jury on charges that he killed 25 intensive care patients at Mount Carmel West hospital by overprescribing them Fentanyl, with 11 of the counts dropped before the trial.
The defense attorney for Husel argued that the doctor was trying to ease the pain of his patients in the last months of their lives. The prosecutors argued that the prescriptions were excessive.
Even if the sun is going to rise in the morning, you can still cause a death under the eyes of the law if you speed it up.
The Mount Carmel Health System received a formal report in October. According to the hospital, three people died after receiving lethal doses of fentanyl and the doctor was fired two months later. Mount Carmel contacted the Franklin County prosecutor's office to investigate the doctor's behavior. The doctor in Ohio was using the drug for medical purposes and not for end-of-life care. As many as 35 people may have been prescribed excessive Fentanyl, and five of them may have recovered from their illnesses, according to the hospital. According to NBC News, one expert testified at Husel's trial that the doctor gave patients 10 times the amount of Fentanyl than was typical for a palliative care setting. Some of the patients who died under Husel's care had cancer or multiple organ failures, and some of their families testified during the trial. If Husel was found guilty of one of the murder charges, he would have been sentenced to life in prison.
More than $20 million. Mount Carmel Health System paid the families of Husel patients to settle suits against the hospital system.
The doctor is accused of killing 14 patients.
The jury reached a verdict in the case of the Ohio doctor.
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