Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
An Ontario doctor was accused of killing four patients. Now he has been acquitted on all charges
Dr. Brian Nadler was charged in the murders of elderly patients at a hospital in Hawkesbury, about 100 kilometres east of Ottawa. His trial was to start Tuesday.
Three years ago, a doctor caring for people with COVID-19 at a small hospital east of Ottawa was accused of intentionally killing an 89-year-old patient.
Dr. Brian Nadler was thrown in jail, stripped of his licence to practise medicine and soon charged in three more murders of elderly patients at the same hospital in Hawkesbury, about 100 kilometres east of Ottawa.
On Tuesday, the day Nadler’s long-awaited murder trial was set to begin, he was instead acquitted on all charges.
“You are free to go with your presumed innocence intact,” the judge told Nadler.
Crown prosecutor Robin Flumerfelt asked for a directed verdict of acquittal because a pre-trial ruling that excluded key expert evidence “made it impossible to continue the prosecution at this point.”
“For all practical purposes, these rulings decided the case against the Crown,” Flumerfelt said in court.