Hootan Roozrokh, left, and his attorney, M. Gerald Schwartzbach, listen to the judge’s ruling Wednesday afternoon.
A judge dismissed two charges against a Bay Area transplant surgeon Wednesday but ordered him to stand trial on one felony charge related to the failed harvest of a disabled San Luis Obispo man’s organs at a local hospital in 2006.
A jury will decide whether Dr. Hootan Roozrokh is guilty of dependent-adult abuse.
The dismissed charges were that he unlawfully prescribed a controlled substance and administered a harmful substance, Betadine, to Ruben Navarro on Feb. 3, 2006.
The case has attracted national attention because a transplant surgeon has never been charged criminally under the circumstances alleged here.
Prosecutor Karen Gray had no comment shortly after Superior Court Judge Martin Tangeman made his ruling Wednesday afternoon.
M. Gerald Schwartzbach, who is defending Roozrokh, said his client is disappoint-
ed that one of the three charges remains but looks forward to defending himself and clearing his name at trial.
The judge’s decision Wednesday came after more than a week of testimony in late February and earlier this month for Roozrokh’s preliminary hearing. Both attorneys gave final arguments Wednesday before the ruling.
Gray alleges Roozrokh ordered excessive amounts of painkillers and sedatives in an attempt to hasten the death of Navarro, who was comatose and who, experts testified at the preliminary hearing, was unable to feel pain at the time of the failed organ harvest.
That, Gray said, is dependent adult abuse, for which the maximum penalty is four years in prison.
Tangeman ruled Gray showed insufficient evidence on the Betadine charge and that the unlawful prescribing charge does not apply to this case.
Navarro was dying of debilitating neurological disease and in January and February 2006 was in an irreversible coma at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo. Navarro’s mother agreed to donate his organs.
He qualified for the rare cardiac-death donation, in which organs are harvested within minutes after a patient’s heart stops beating. The patient must die within an hour of being removed from life support for the organs to remain viable for transplant.
Navarro’s heart did not stop until eight hours after being taken off life support. His organs were never harvested.
Gray argued Wednesday that Roozrokh knew he had limited time and tried to suppress Navarro’s breathing by prescribing the drugs.
“Transplant is a wonderful medical advance that can save lives,” Gray said, “but not at the expense of other lives.”
Schwartzbach called the prosecution of Roozrokh “unfounded,” “unwise,” and “damaging to organ transplantation nationally and internationally.”
“Nothing this man did, nothing this man said, adversely affected the quality of Mr. Navarro’s life,” Schwartzbach said, gesturing to Roozrokh.
The surgeon could not have violated the standard of care to merit the dependent adult abuse charge, Schwartzbach said, because no such standard applies to the extraordinary circumstances of this case.
No transplant surgeon in the world, he said, has ever been in similar circumstances, in which the hospital had no cardiac-donation protocol; its staff hadn’t been trained; the attending physician didn’t understand her role; and the surgeon and coordinator had only observed one such donation.
“This is a situation where the entire system failed,” Schwartzbach said.
Gray conceded a “perfect storm” of inexperience occurred in the Sierra Vista operating room that night but maintained Roozrokh violated his utmost responsibility to “do no harm.”
“A doctor should first do no harm no matter the benefit to someone else,” she said.
Roozrokh is to be arraigned April 2 in Superior Court. It is unknown when his trial might begin.
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