Coroner: autopsies now with prosecutors

Autopsies have been completed for the four patients connected to the only criminal case arising from hospital deaths in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, but the results will remain secret while a grand jury considers indictments, the coroner said Wednesday.

The results were turned over to the district attorney's office, said Dr. Frank Minyard. He added that he expected the grand jury to begin looking into the case May 2.

The four patients were among 34 who died at Memorial Hospital after Katrina hit in 2005, but the only ones that Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti's office found to be homicides. Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry were arrested last summer, but they have not been formally charged and are free on bond.

Power was knocked out at the hospital, surrounding streets were flooded and temperatures rose to 110 degrees on the floor where critically ill patients were housed.

Foti said the women gave the desperately ill, stranded patients lethal injections of drugs after determining that the patients were either too ill or too incapacitated to be moved following Katrina. The women, backed by many medical professionals, deny wrongdoing; Pou has said she was trying to ease the patients' pain, not kill them.

Minyard said in February that he had been unable to determine the causes of death of the four patients, ages 61 to 90. On Wednesday he said he was able to classify the deaths after toxicology test results came in.

Autopsies conducted on the patients, like all the autopsies that followed the hurricane, were limited in scope, Minyard said.

"You have to remember the autopsies did not start until three weeks after the hurricane," Minyard said. "By that time the bodies were severely decomposed."

A special grand jury was put together March 6, but had not yet begun investigating the hospital deaths by this week. An assistant district attorney said the panel, which will stay in place a year, was busy with other cases.