Louisiana nursing home owners charged with 34 counts of murder

Their accomplice? Hurricane Katrina.

I’ve not done any further research beyond this article just yet, as far as seeking out every news article I can find on the matter. I won’t reiterate statements made in the article; refer to the source material… it reads like a He Said/She Said situation. Depending on whose side of the fence you want to sit on, this could be negligent homicide, or this could be a ridiculous charge.

Let us assume all claims and statements, made by both sides, reported in the article are true. Is this an appropriate charge to make? According to the article, the owners, with a great track record of caring for their patients, are accused of being negligent in getting certain patients out of the home – patients they claimed would be safer staying in the home than being evacuated. The owners, as I can ascertain from this article, made their decision not on the grounds that they intended for these people to die, but rather they thought it was the best decision given their circumstances. It turns out their “best” decision had bad results, but given that their decision was based on, supposedly, the speculation that the patients would die anyway if they had been moved, it sounds like they had a 50/50 chance. The owners figured the patients had a better chance of survival by remaining in the nursing home. Apparently, the Louisiana Attorney General thinks the owners should’ve made the other choice and risked killing the patients by evacuating them.

There is no way to say the latter choice would have turned out better. This is not to say the owners made the right or wrong decision. The only thing that can be said is that the owners made what they thought was the best decision at the time.

I’m not really one to publicy froth at the mouth at news items like this, but I found this murder charge a little odd given the circumstances of a natural disaster.