Kentucky Nurse Accused of Overdosing Veterans
Thirty-two year-old Maria K. Whitt appeared in Court on Tuesday, October 6, 2009 and pleaded "not guilty" to murdering ninety year-old Jesse Chain, a veterans' hospital patient. Her indictment stated that Whitt "willfully, deliberately, maliciously and with premeditation and malice aforethought" injected Chain with "lethal levels of morphine", killing him.
Jesse Chain was admitted to the VA hospital in Lexington, Kentucky on August 30, 2006 with chronic heart failure and kidney problems. When he was placed in intensive care on August 31, 2006, his family requested no resuscitation efforts be made to prolong his life. On September 3, 2006, after the medical staff had exhausted efforts to save Mr. Chain, a morphine drip was prescribed "to ease him into a comfortable passing". Nurse Maria Whitt started the morphine drip.
Chain was to receive 1 mg of morphine per hour. He received eight doses, six of which were 10 mgs each, along with a steady drip, in the 6 1/2 hours prior to his death. After Chain's death, Whitt and a co-worker cleaned the room and the co-worker noticed the bottle of morphine was empty.
In her first statement to investigators, Whitt suggested that Chain's family or another nurse may have overmedicated Chain, but his family was ruled out. Whitt admitted that she administered the doses of morphine to Chain.
If convicted of murder, Whitt could be sentenced to life in prison, could be fined $250,000, and could face five years of supervised release.
Whitt is also under suspicion for two other patient deaths, but has not been charged. One patient, an 88 year-old man with heart problems was placed on morphine for comfort measures after his breathing tube was removed. He was prescribed 1 mg morphine per hour, but 60 milliliters of morphine were unaccounted for. The other patient was a 60 year-old man who was to receive 1 mg of morphine per hour after suffering a severe heart attack. In that case, 34 milliliters of morphine were missing.
