Former doctor William Husel broke down on the witness stand during testimony in his defamation trial against his former employer as he told a jury about the day he learned he was charged with prescribing fatal doses of medicine to patients.
The former Mount Carmel doctor began his testimony on June 9 and continued into Tuesday, June 10. It’s the first time he has testified in public about the care he provided to his patients while at Mount Carmel.
The 49-year-old is suing Mount Carmel, its parent company, Trinity Health Corporation, and Mount Carmel’s former CEO, Ed Lamb, for defamation. He says public statements the hospital made about him related to his prescribing fatal doses of opioids to patients did irreparable damage to his reputation, career and personal life.
In a 2022 criminal trial, Husel was acquitted of wrongdoing in many instances. Prosecutors eventually dropped several remaining charges against him, but he had previously stated that he was only providing comfort care to suffering patients.
Attorneys for the hospital spent part of their time questioning Husel, laying a foundation to establish that he had a history of accusations of over-prescribing medication to patients before his indictment.
Husel, who paused to compose himself several times as he became emotional, told a jury about the impact Mount Carmel’s statements, beginning in January 2019, had on his life and the lives of his wife and their two daughters.
He said the first inkling he had that something might be wrong was on the evening before Mount Carmel’s first public statement. Husel testified a nurse called him and told him, “D-Day was coming, and it’s going to be really bad.”
Husel said the following day, after the first medical malpractice suit was filed against him by a patient’s family and Mount Carmel’s public statement, he opened his Facebook account to find more than 1,000 messages, many of them hateful.
“They said I was a serial killer, that I should rot in prison, that I should be buried under the prison,” Husel said.
While Husel did not address any of Mount Carmel’s statements specifically, he said he couldn’t comprehend why the families of patients he had cared for were suing him.
“Why would I do CPR on someone, save their life and then an hour later intentionally kill them,” Husel said.
Husel also described having reporters try to get a comment from him about the lawsuits and being pointed at or talked about when he went to restaurants or stores — something he says continues to happen to this day.
Husel told the jury that he and his wife, Mariah, live in her parent’s home, which he described as a “double-wide trailer” with two bedrooms and a bathroom. He said he does not work, while his wife is working full-time and working towards a Master’s degree, and he often sleeps on the floor.
Husel also testified about the day he learned a grand jury had indicted him on 25 counts of murder. He said he got a call from his attorney, who wouldn’t tell him what charges he was facing. Husel cried as he talked about watching his children taking a bath that night, knowing he would be turning himself in to police the next day.
“I started thinking I’m never going to see my kids again,” Husel said.
Eleven of the 25 murder charges were later dismissed. A Franklin County jury found Husel not guilty of the remaining 14 charges after a 2022 trial. A month after the trial’s conclusion, Husel voluntarily surrendered his medical license, which the Ohio Medical Board then permanently revoked.
Powell Miller, an attorney for the hospital system, began cross-examining Husel on June 10, asking him about findings the state medical board had made when suspending Husel’s license in 2019. Those findings, shown to the jury, include that Husel gave “inappropriate and excessive” doses of medication to multiple patients who died within minutes of receiving the doses of fentanyl.
Mount Carmel’s public statements said Husel’s dosing was “significantly excessive and potentially fatal.”
Cross-examination is expected to continue on June 10.
Prior to being questioned by the hospital system, Husel testified about the death of 82-year-old Melissa Penix, who died on the last night Husel worked in the ICU before the hospital placed him on leave.
“Why are you crying,” Husel’s attorney asked.
“Just because it was my last night at work there,” Husel said. “When I started thinking about the husband crying and not wanting to let her go, it makes me sad to think about that.”
Husel described wanting to make Penix comfortable and avoid suffocation, what her family said was her “greatest fear in life.” Husel ordered a 2,000 microgram dosage of fentanyl for Penix, who died five minutes later.
Husel was fired in December 2018 amid concerns about the dosages of fentanyl he was prescribing for patients taken off life support.
Husel is seeking $18 million in damages, which his attorneys have said is an estimate of the amount of money Husel would have made as a doctor.
Filed under: General Problems
This is heartbreaking for the doctor, as well as doctors and patients in the future. If the professionals who treat patients with the most severe chronic pain are treated as guilty because of the medications they prescribe, it will soon become impossible to access pain care at all.
May he win on principle. Will be praying for him and the others who still face long roads ahead.
Totally. Our Constitution and judicial system are predicated on innocent until proven guilty. But when it involves opioids it appears that the accused are under the Napoleonic law of guilty until proven innocent.