Dallas anesthesiologist challenges conviction for poisoning IV bags

(CN) — A Dallas anesthesiologist asked a Fifth Circuit panel Wednesday to overturn his conviction for poisoning patient IV bags with dangerous drugs, arguing there was insufficient evidence to support the conviction.

In the summer of 2022, patients at Baylor Scott & White Surgicare North Dallas began experiencing a string of unexplained cardiac emergencies that resulted in them needing to be hospitalized. Eventually, staff at the facility came to suspect these incidents were being caused by poisoned IV bags.

The wrapper for an IV saline bag used in one of the patients’ surgeries was found to have a hole in it, and testing revealed that the bag contained the drugs epinephrine, bupivacaine and lidocaine. Other IV bags at the facility were also found to have holes in their wrappers and to contain chemicals they should not have.

Surveillance video revealed a suspect: Dr. Raynaldo Riviera Ortiz, who was shown placing IV bags in the facility’s IV bag warmer before surgeries in which patients experienced unexpected emergencies. Witnesses testified at trial that it wasn’t part of Ortiz’s job to put bags in the warmer. At one point, video showed Ortiz filling syringes with drugs, going into an operating room and then exiting with an IV bag, which he placed in the warmer.

Prosecutors argued that Ortiz was motivated to poison the bags because he was undergoing disciplinary proceedings and wanted to make other doctors’ surgeries go wrong in order to take the heat off of himself. In April 2024, following an eight-day trial, a jury convicted Ortiz of four counts of tampering with consumer products resulting in serious bodily injury, one count of tampering with a consumer product and five counts of intentional adulteration of a drug.

At sentencing, the trial judge said Ortiz’s actions were “tantamount to attempted murder.” He sentenced Ortiz to 190 years in prison.

But Kevin Joel Page, a public defender representing Ortiz, told the three-judge appeals panel there was no video evidence or witness testimony directly showing Ortiz injecting substances into the bags.

“Ultimately, what the government has done very diligently and ably is assemble a lot of facts that ultimately are fundamentally ambiguous about what they show,” Page said.

Page also argued the trial court erred in admitting evidence that another doctor who worked at the facility died after using an IV bag she brought home from one of the facilities she worked at to hydrate herself. Since Ortiz was not charged for the doctor’s death, Page argued, this evidence — which included the doctor’s husband testifying about how he watched his wife die — prejudiced the jury in a way that outweighed its evidentiary value.

“I think I could sit through a week of listening to anesthesiologists talk about cardiac arrest and be able to tell you about 10 minutes of it, but if I spent half an hour in the room watching somebody describe the death of their loved one, I would remember that for years,” Page said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gail Hayworth told the panel the evidence of the doctor’s death was probative because, unlike the patients who experienced cardiac events, the doctor was not undergoing surgery at the time of her death, removing potential alternative causes that the defense said could explain the symptoms the patients were experiencing.

But U.S. Circuit Judge Stephen Higginson, a Barack Obama appointee, pushed back on that argument, questioning whether there was sufficient evidence to conclude that the IV bag the doctor brought home even came from Surgicare. He pointed out the emotional weight of the husband’s testimony.

“There was no limitation on the husband at all, so he was even able to describe her screams, and he described watching her put in a body bag,” Higginson said. “How in the world is that not inflaming a jury?”

U.S. Circuit Judge Priscilla Richman, a George W. Bush appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham, a Donald Trump appointee, joined Higginson on the panel.