Criminal Law II: follow-up on the Memorial Hospital case

Now that the Louisiana Attorney General has had his day (see my earlier post), the extent of AG Foti's grandstanding is starting to come to light. You'd never know it from his office's press release on this case, but consider the following:

• the state attorney general has no power to indict or prosecute for these alleged crimes;
• the physician and nurses involved have not been charged with any crime, only arrested, which is the extent of the state AG's authority;
• there has been no grand jury investigation into the deaths at Memorial hospital;
• there is not yet an official medical examiner's report into the cause of death of the four patients whose deaths lead the AG to arrest the health care workers;
• the Orleans Parish D.A., Eddie Jordan, has the prosecutorial authority in these cases, and he's taking a wait-and-see attitude; and
• there is at least some feeling among Louisiana lawyers that the AG's aggressive grandstanding crosses the line into unethical behavior and is related to his plan to run for reelection in 2008.

There's a good article from the L.A. Times on all this.