After a hung jury, attorney general’s office abandons elder abuse case against Placerville nurse
When 77-year-old Johnnie Esco died in 2008 after a short stay at a Placerville nursing home, her husband of 60 years wanted someone held responsible – civilly and criminally.
Don Esco of Cameron Park settled his civil lawsuit against the El Dorado Care Center and its owner in 2010 for $2.9 million. The criminal matter ended quite differently this week, with California’s attorney general declining to seek a new trial against the facility’s former head nurse following a mistrial.
More than five years after the elderly woman’s death, an El Dorado County jury failed to reach a verdict in the case against Donna Darlene Palmer, charged with felony elder abuse.
Palmer, the former director of nursing at the facility, was one of two nurses charged criminally last year by the California attorney general’s office. At the time, Attorney General Kamala D. Harris’ office had announced plans to intensify efforts statewide to bring criminal cases against nursing home administrators and employees whose failings harm vulnerable patients.
Read more: The real story should be about the cases of criminal elder abuse, criminal financial elder abuse, fraud and undue influence that the AG and L.A. DA refuse to file and bring before a jury.
If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected--those, precisely, who need the law's protection most!--and listens to their testimony. ~ JAMES BALDWIN, The Price of the Ticket
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