Orleans Parish grand jury declines to indict Anna Pou

The Orleans Parish grand jury’s decision not to indict Anna Pou closed the criminal case in New Orleans, but it did not settle the contested question of what the medical evidence showed about deaths at Memorial Medical Center and LifeCare. The proceeding turned on whether jurors believed the evidence supported a specific intent to kill; the grand jury returned no indictment on any of the ten proposed counts.

An investigation shaped by uncertain evidence

The case had developed amid practical and scientific obstacles. The bodies recovered from Memorial had spent more than a week in heat, and Frank Minyard initially told Virginia Rider that autopsies would be of little use: blood could not be sampled to test for lethal drug levels. A volunteer pathologist pointed out that drugs might remain detectable in more resilient tissues or in fluid collected in the abdomen. Minyard then agreed to request autopsies and tissue samples from about one hundred people who had died in Orleans Parish hospitals and nursing homes after Hurricane Katrina. Allegations of wrongdoing had been made about several facilities.

On September 22, investigators sent tissue samples from eighteen Memorial bodies to National Medical Services, Inc., in Pennsylvania. In an initial report on those cases, the laboratory found morphine in nine and midazolam in about five or six. Later analysis covered forty-one bodies from Memorial and LifeCare; twenty-three tested positive for morphine, midazolam, or both. Those results established that the drugs were present in the tested tissues, but did not by themselves establish when or how much had been administered, what caused a particular death, or whether anyone had intended to cause death.

At a later expert review, Robert Middleberg cautioned that postmortem drug concentrations were difficult to interpret because heat and decomposition might alter them. The reviewers therefore considered the laboratory results alongside each patient’s clinical history. They examined whether a result might reflect one large dose or accumulated doses, whether kidney or liver disease could affect how drugs were processed, and whether the drugs’ effects on breathing and blood pressure were consistent with known times of death. The analysis depended on case-specific records as well as laboratory findings.

Disagreement over what toxicology could establish

Frank Minyard consulted Steven Karch, who argued that drug levels measured in bodies exposed to prolonged heat could not reliably establish the levels present before death; he advised leaving the medical cause of death undetermined. Michael Baden disputed the implication that uncertainty about dosage erased the significance of the results, emphasizing that morphine and Versed had been detected and that he saw no competing cause of death. Cyril Wecht likewise considered some measured levels very high. He tested whether hot, humid conditions changed drug levels in samples from overdose cases, but the comparison was small, unpublished, and not independently vetted. It added evidence without removing the uncertainty.

Minyard had to weigh these competing views while considering what a prosecution could prove. He imagined a trial in which forensic experts would sharply contest the evidence and believed the parish could lose on reasonable doubt, a result he feared would harm the city’s recovery. His consultations and public comments did not yield a single uncontested medical conclusion. The grand jury’s decision therefore followed an investigation in which the distinction between detecting a drug, inferring its effect, and proving criminal intent remained central.

The proposed charges and the vote

The special grand jury stopped hearing evidence and prepared to decide under an oath to indict when warranted and keep its proceedings secret. Its members were to deliberate and vote without the assistant district attorney who had examined witnesses, though that prosecutor had served as their legal adviser. The closing instructions presented the decision as dependent on which account of the facts jurors believed. An indictment required agreement from nine jurors; twelve served when all were present.

On July 24, 2007, ten jurors—eight women and two men—assembled in Section E of the New Orleans criminal courts building. The district attorney’s office had submitted a ten-count bill: one count of second-degree murder concerning Emmett Everett and nine counts of conspiracy to commit second-degree murder, one for each of the LifeCare patients on the seventh floor, including Everett. In considering the bill, jurors were asked whether the evidence persuaded them that Pou had the specific intent to kill, a required element of second-degree murder under Louisiana law.

Judge Calvin Johnson read the ten counts, then read the foreman’s handwritten response: “Not a true bill.” The grand jury declined to indict Pou on every charge. The decision was not a trial verdict after a public contest of the evidence; it meant that the proposed prosecution would not proceed on those counts.

Public response and the case’s end

The decision produced sharply different public statements. Reporters waiting at the courthouse questioned Assistant Attorney General Julie Cullen, who maintained that the state’s position was that the deaths constituted homicide. District Attorney Eddie Jordan, speaking from temporary offices, said that he respected and agreed with the grand jury’s decision. The contrast left visible the difference between the prosecution’s stated view of the case and the grand jury’s refusal to authorize charges.

The grand jury’s no-bill ended the case in New Orleans, but its procedural conclusion did not make the underlying medical evidence unanimous or erase the competing interpretations presented during the investigation. Toxicology findings, postmortem uncertainty, clinical histories, and the legal requirement to establish intent addressed different questions. The event’s significance lies in that boundary: the decision determined whether criminal charges would go forward, not a definitive scientific account of every patient’s death.