{"id":350,"date":"2009-10-29T17:22:09","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T21:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=350"},"modified":"2009-10-29T17:22:09","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T21:22:09","slug":"worlds-first-posthumous-guilty-plea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=350","title":{"rendered":"World’s First Posthumous Guilty Plea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actually, I don’t know whether it’s the world’s first, but the situation is certainly, as this story<\/a> in the Elkhart Truth put it, “unusual.” The story’s headline declares: “Embattled optometrist Gabriele did give falsified diagnoses.” The trouble is, Dr. Philip Gabriele and his wife denied any wrongdoing in a suicide note<\/a> they mailed to a local TV station a couple days after they were indicted by a federal grand jury and before killing themselves. Shortly after the couple’s suicide, an ophthalmologist who was prepared to testify on their behalf, James Freeman, told the South Bend Tribune <\/a>that he was<\/p>\n

“disappointed and surprised by the indictment.” Freeman said he didn’t know the Gabrieles but did review medical charts that the government claimed showed their culpability.<\/p>\n

“From what I’ve seen and the charges I’ve seen, I’m surprised the prosecutors were willing to indict on this,” Freeman said. “I certainly did not see anything that constituted fraud. Things, at first glance, can look funny to somebody who doesn’t understand the medicine behind it.”<\/p>\n

Still, it seemed the government was determined to press forward with the case after two years of work, Freeman said.<\/p>\n

“I’m not saying [AUSA Donald Schmid] was acting in bad faith,” Freeman said. “He probably felt a crime was committed, but I just think he was wrong. I was prepared to come and testify about that, but unfortunately I won’t have that opportunity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what news justified the conclusion in the Elkhart “Truth”‘s headline that the Gabrieles were guilty? Well, a representative of a local bank appointed by the local circuit court to handle the Gabrieles’ estate and the corporation under which they’d operated their eye practice (dba the Gabriele Eye Institute) pled guilty on behalf of the corporation, even though the representative, according to the story, “had no personal knowledge of the events.”<\/p>\n

Along with its irresponsible and misleading headline, it looks like the Elkhart Truth story got one significant fact wrong. According to its story, the “corporation admitted that Dr. Philip Gabriele performed unnecessary procedures and that his staff altered patients’ charts.” But according to this updated story<\/a> from the aforementioned local TV station, the corporation only pled guilty to one count of <\/span><\/span><\/span>“making false statements in connection with the delivery and payment of health care benefits and services,” in exchange for which “prosecutors agreed to drop 14 other charges–including those surrounding allegations that unnecessary surgeries were performed.” According to the updated story, the Gabriele Eye Institute’s assistant office manager and ophthalmic assistant still questions the plea:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“The accusations of fraud and all of that, I never saw anything like that,” Coughlin said. “I was with Dr. Gabriele 90 percent of the time, and if anything happened, well, I just don’t understand.”<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

“It’s coming to a close, which we’re very happy about. You feel a little weight off your shoulders that the possibility of going to court, going up on the witness stand and all of that has gone away. But, I would have loved to fight it. I would have loved to have it come back with egg on the prosecutor’s face that nothing–nothing–was wrong.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m guessing the AUSA had reasons to be happy with the guilty plea too, along with the public “closure” and associated headlines.<\/p>\n

In their suicide note, the Gabrieles wrote: “Our only request at this point is that the press and appropriate government agencies investigate our case so that another similar tragedy may be avoided.” Their letter, rather inconsistently, expresses support for appropriate law enforcement and the government in general while blaming AUSA Donald Schmid in particular for a life destroying prosecution of the innocent in their case. One would have hoped that they would have stayed to fight the charges. Maybe they were guilty, despite their last words and their request for further investigation of their case. Or maybe they, understandably, didn’t really trust the justice system to vindicate the truth in their case after all, which they said they could no longer afford to defend in any event.<\/p>\n

And ultimately, it’s evident that their professed hope for further investigation of their case by the press or the government was naive and misplaced. It’s ironic that the corporation they formed, presumably to protect themselves from liability in life, wound up after their death publicly confessing on their behalf to something they themselves said they didn’t do. It revealed itself as an unprofitable servant. And so it is, it seems, with all of the alter egos we manufacture via the State.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/blockquote>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/blockquote>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/blockquote>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/blockquote>\n
\n
\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actually, I don’t know whether it’s the world’s first, but the situation is certainly, as this story in the Elkhart Truth put it, “unusual.” The story’s headline declares: “Embattled optometrist Gabriele did give falsified diagnoses.” The trouble is, Dr. Philip Gabriele and his wife denied any wrongdoing in a suicide note they mailed to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions\/351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}