Contact: Dave Andrusko, Source: NRLC
There were broad hints from Kermit Gosnell's attorney on the day the abortionist was convicted of three counts of first degree murder that his client would plead guilty to charges that he operated what the grand jury described as a "pill mill."
A further and unmistakable sign was that yesterday he filed a "change-of-plea notice "with the U.S. Attorney's Office. That new plea will be formally entered in front of U.S. District Court Judge Cynthia M. Rufe June 6.
"Gosnell and six of his employees are accused of writing thousands of prescriptions for controlled substances with no legitimate medical purpose between June 2008 and February 2010," The Philadelphia Daily News reported. "According to the indictment, Gosnell made more than $200,000 on the scam."
NRL News Today has frequently mentioned the irony that Gosnell's "Baby Charnel House" was discovered only because local and federal authorities raided his house for evidence he was distributing drugs, Oxycontin in particular. But a closer look at the grand jury report indicates that a member of the District Attorney's office came along because he had heard of a woman dying at Gosnell's Women's Medical Society. The way the two intersect—the illegal prescriptions and what turned out to be Gosnell's "House of Horrors"– can be summarized in four bullet points.
(From the section of the report titled, "The Raid.")
#1. The FBI and local authorities executing search warrants on February 18, 2010, as part of a drug-trafficking investigation ("illegal prescription drug activity"). But prior to the raid, they'd heard of a woman who had died the previous November [Karnamaya Mongar].
#2. During the drug trafficking investigation, they learned that "Gosnell routinely relied on unlicensed and untrained staff to treat patients, conduct medical tests, and administer medications without supervision. Even more alarmingly, Gosnell instructed unlicensed workers to sedate patients with dangerous drugs in his absence."
#3. District Attorney's Detective James Wood believed the woman's death needed further investigation. "The detective searched for a police report on the incident, but finding none, he went to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office to try to identify the woman and to find out more about her death. Detective Wood learned that the dead woman was Karnamaya Mongar, and that her toxicology report revealed an extremely high level of Demerol, a drug Gosnell used at the clinic to anesthetize patients."
#4. Putting this all this together—"this suspicious death and the other significant health and medical concerns"—DEA Agent Stephen Dougherty "invited personnel from the Pennsylvania Department of State (which regulates doctors and the practice of medicine) and the Pennsylvania Department of Health (which regulates health care facilities) to accompany law enforcement officers on the February 18 raid. No one from these agencies had visited the clinic in more than 15 years, even after the Department of Health had been informed of Mrs. Mongar's death months earlier."
