Prosecution Wants 20 Years For “Dr Death”

By , 23 Oct 2018, 14:30 PM News
Prosecution Wants 20 Years For “Dr Death” pixabay.com: WilliamCho CC-by-0

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STA, 22 October 2018 - Delivering the closing arguments in a trial of a doctor charged with killing four of his patients and several other crimes, the prosecution demanded on Monday that Ivan Radan be sentenced to a combined 20 years in prison and stripped of his medical licence.

The neurologist stands accused of four counts of manslaughter, while he also faces charges related to photographing his patients without permission and charges of abuse of controlled substances as well as charges of abuse of office and document falsification.

The prosecution demanded Radan be given a combined sentence of 20 years in prison, whereas individual sentences for charges would be significantly higher, as four counts of manslaughter, which carries the minimum sentence of five years in prison, alone would amount to the requested sentence.

In addition to five years for every manslaughter, individual sentences requested by prosecutor Katarina Bergant are six months for falsifying documents, 18 months for abuse of office and a month for every illicit recording of patients.

On the other hand, Radan's lawyer Gorazd Fišer, who will deliver his closing arguments on Thursday, believes there is no grounds for a sentence of any kind. "The prosecutor believes everything has been proven, but we believe otherwise," he told the press.

The ruling in the unprecedented case in Slovenia is expected on 6 November. Opening in January 2015, the closely-watched trial saw a series of conflicting testimonies, repeated psychological assessments and even an experiment on pigs.

The news that a Ljubljana Neurological Clinic doctor allegedly hastened the death of a terminally-ill patient with a deadly cocktail of drugs in late 2014 first broke in January 2015.

The ensuing criminal investigation indicated that seven more of his patients had died in suspicious circumstances between September 2012 and December 2014.

Radan allegedly administered to them larger doses of mostly morphine, as well as propofol, and in the last case morphine and potassium chloride, but he has claimed that he made it appear as if he euthanised a patient to draw attention to the poor communication at the intensive care unit of Ljubljana UKC's Neurology Clinic.

In her closing arguments, Bergant draw to the court's attention Radan's constant adaptations of statements, while she was also critical of Austrian court-appointed expert Wolfgang Kröll, who allegedly helped the doctor's defence by directly attacking the prosecution and insulting the prosecution's expert witness.

Forensic expert Kröll was called in after previous testimonies by three other experts proved inconclusive.

While previous testimonies led to the prosecution dropping the number of murder charges from six to four, Kröll's arguments at the final hearing led to the prosecution changing charges from four counts of murder to four counts of manslaughter.

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