Defendant William Husel faces 14 counts of murder related to allegations that he was prescribing fentanyl in doses “designed to speed up the death of inpatients,” prosecutors said when Husel was indicted in June 2019. He was charged with 25 counts of murder, but in January – about a month before the trial began – 11 of the 25 charges against him were dropped. Husel pleaded not guilty. Husel worked at Mount Carmel Health System in Columbus. He was fired on December 5, 2018. According to the indictment, the deaths of patients occurred between February 2015 and November 2018. In arguing for a misdemeanor, Baez said prosecutors asked during Monday’s final game why the defense did not put some witnesses on the podium and why the defense did not ask specific questions of their experts. Prosecutors also told jurors that “no one in the world is giving these doses,” citing fentanyl at the heart of the case when there was no evidence of this, Baez said. The prosecution said their concluding arguments were correct and Judge Michael Holbrooke will rule on the misdemeanor claim Tuesday morning before jury hearings begin.

“It’s a murder to kill a dying person,” prosecutors say

Prosecutors spent more than two hours announcing their closure on Monday, arguing in part that “it’s a murder to kill a dying man.” Franklin County Assistant Attorney General David Zayen told the court that Hussel had a “specific intent” to cause the deaths of all 14 patients. “You have to get into his mind,” Zeyen said. “You have to understand that.” Zeyen told jurors that even if the patients’ underlying medical conditions also caused the deaths, if fentanyl “accelerated deaths”, Husel was responsible. Zayen handed out a large number of fentanyl bottles for the jury to see as he referred to witness statements describing patients’ medical conditions. He said each patient was different, but many were given the same amount of medication. Several patients suffered brain damage, Zeyen told the jury, but instead of being given less medication because they could not feel the pain, higher doses were ordered from Husel.
Prosecution experts testified that no one else in the field of comfort medical care gives similar amounts of fentanyl. “No literature supports it,” Zeyen said. Three other ICU doctors at Mount Carmel West – where Husel practiced – testified that they used morphine for pain rather than fentanyl, and that morphine was given in small doses at regular intervals.

Railings of defense against prosecutors, police in the final arguments

Defense attorney Baez argued that prosecutors had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the doses actually accelerated patients’ deaths or that Husel deliberately intended to kill patients. He criticized the prosecutors’ case, saying: “What was fed to you and was not true. It was in stark contrast to the files. That is not the process.” Baez told the court that police initially did not conduct a fair and impartial investigation. He accused police of relying too heavily on the hospital’s internal investigation and said prosecutors did not ask when patients stopped breathing because they had respiratory depression and then their heart stopped beating. “William Hussel is sitting here now because they did not do that,” he said. Husel never tried to hide the amount of fentanyl he gave patients, Baez said. “You are doing something wrong and you are trying to hide it,” he told the jury. “That shows his intention there.” Baez also argued that both sides agreed that there were no maximum doses of fentanyl used in comfort medicine and examined all 14 patients, describing the steps Husel took to save their lives. The nurses who worked alongside Husel were the most important witnesses in this trial, he said, adding that they all lost their jobs and most are no longer nurses. “You would think they would be very angry with William Husel,” but everyone spoke highly of him as a doctor, Baez said. “It was there. We were not,” he said. CNN’s Amir Vera and Taylor Romine contributed to this report.