Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away With Murder by James B. Stewart Page A

Cincione functioned as legal counsel. The only doctors present were Goodman, Carey, and Hunt. Goodman and Hunt had already expressed their skepticism of the nurses’ claims.
    Just a few years earlier, Carey had hired and brought to Ohio State a surgeon with a criminal record. The surgeon, an old friend of Carey’s, had been fined and sentenced to six months’ hard labor after pleading guilty to eleven counts of attempted sodomy, indecent assault, committing lewd and indecent acts, and using his position to solicit sexual favors from women subordinates while he was chief of surgery at a Philadelphia hospital. Though the prosecutor had characterized the offenses as “crimes of violence, crimes that shock the conscience,” in 1982 Carey recommended to the Ohio Medical Board that the doctor be licensed to practice medicine, saying that the sex crimes were “misbehavior at worst. From my point of view, they are not the kind of charges that ought to permanently damage a man’s career.” Tzagournis had approved hiring the surgeon even after Carey informed him of the doctor’s criminal record. 4
    Knowing this history, Dickson considered the possibility that the doctors’ first instinct might be to rally around Swango, a fellow doctor. She had seen how protective of one another doctors were, both at Ohio State and in other hospitals where she had worked. Yet these circumstances were extraordinary, with the lives of patients possibly at stake. She took the lead, presenting the evidence she had been able to collect during the course of the day. She reviewed theCooper incident, described Utz’s observations, mentioned the syringe found by Risley, and briefly reviewed the McGee, DeLong, Walter, and Barrick cases. Then she listened with mounting dismay as the doctors undercut the gravity of her disclosures. She thought the doctors seemed more concerned about Swango’s rights than they did the patients’ lives.
    Hunt immediately cast doubt on anything Utz might have said, noting that she was awaiting treatment for a brain tumor. The group discussed what might have caused Cooper’s respiratory arrest, and while conceding that a toxic drug might be one explanation, the doctors noted that there might also be many others.
    Dickson and Boyanowski thought the evidence was sufficiently serious and compelling that the police should be notified. Cincione, the lawyer, disagreed and said there was no evidence any crime had been committed, nor was there enough evidence to know how to proceed. Cincione recommended that the hospital’s medical staff—the doctors—conduct a discreet internal investigation.
    Dickson, Boyanowski, and Cramp all thought it was a mistake for the hospital to try to investigate itself, but they deferred to Cincione’s legal judgment. Dickson was expressly ordered not to question any nurses further—this because of the fear, first expressed by Dr. Goodman, that to do so would only fuel the nurses’ “tensions and concerns,” which might in turn alarm patients. Instead, Goodman himself, who from the outset had been highly skeptical of the nurses’ claims, took charge of the investigation. He agreed to report his findings to the group at a meeting the following Saturday morning.
    The meeting ended at about eight P.M . Swango had been sitting on a bench in the lobby. Dr. Carey suggested he “go home for a few days” because of the incident report. Swango took the news calmly.
    Dickson was upset by the meeting, but felt if she could only get her message across to Tzagournis, whom she knew and respected, he would surely recognize how serious the situation was. She couldn’t reach the dean, so she called Holder, the assistant attorney general, who had been briefed on the meeting by Cincione, to try the same tack. She asked him to meet with her in her office, which he did the next day. Holder insisted on deferring to Cincione’s judgment that there wasn’t any credible evidence of a crimeand they should await