Juan+Ruiz

I am using the  Grand Jury Report on the crimes of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell as the basis of this Wiki. I will add material to support my contention that though Gosnell is beyond the pale, this is mainly in the way he combined and refined aspects of the ghoulish and callous disregard for humanity often seen in abortionists. He was hardly a pioneer.

In order to distinguish between my own writings, and those of the Grand Jury, I will use a different font that makes the Grand Jury Report appear to be typed.

= = =Juan Ruiz, prosecuting attorney for the Pennsylvania Dept of State,=

Lawyers at the Pennsylvania Department of State behaved in the same fashion [as lawyers at the DOH] . Attorneys Mark Greenwald, Charles Hartwell, David Grubb, Andrew Kramer, William Newport, Juan Ruiz, and Kerry Maloney were confronted with a growing pile of disquieting facts about Gosnell, including a detailed, inside account from a former employee, and a 22-year-old dead woman. Every time, though, they managed to dismiss the evidence as immaterial. Every time, that is, until the facts hit the fan.

~*~

On April 20, 2009, a prosecuting attorney for the Department of State, Juan Ruiz, recommended closing the file [Dana Haynes]  without “intensive review” – in fact, without reviewing anything but the complaint. With no other facts, and no attempt to determine any other facts, Ruiz concluded: “The important allegation is that referenced above [Plaintiff contends she suffered permanent injuries due to respondent lacerating her small intestine during an abortion.]. Barring a pattern of conduct – which does not exist in this case – this would be, at most, considered simple negligence or incompetence, as this would be a case of surgical site injury.”

Ruiz testified before the Grand Jury. He insisted that “everything of substance gets investigated.” Yet he ordered no investigation of Dana Haynes’s complaint. No one even talked to Ms. Haynes – until investigator Gillespie did after the February 2010 raid. Ruiz wrote that no “pattern of conduct” existed in this case. But how could he possibly know that? He did not look at Gosnell’s history. A simple database search conducted by the evaluator from the National Abortion Federation, before she visited the clinic in December 2009, showed that at least five women before Haynes had successfully sued Gosnell for perforating their uteruses. Private settlements do not show up on the database, so there could be many more. Gosnell, or his insurers, had paid over $1.7 million to these women or their families. One, Semika Shaw, had died from her injuries – as Ruiz should have been aware.

Ruiz claimed that he had no way to find this information. If that is true, it is appalling. The database used by the abortion federation’s evaluator – the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) – is designed for use by state boards of medicine to assist them in quickly and easily identifying and disciplining medical providers who engage in unprofessional behavior. The database was established by the U.S. Congress and is administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It lists the names of complainants, their allegations, and the amount of the settlements. The basis for Ruiz’s decision – that Gosnell had no history of perforating uteruses – would have been quickly dispelled had he simply checked the NPDB’s information.

Even if the prosecuting attorney did not have access to the NPDB database, Ruiz should have been alarmed by the information in the Department of State’s own records. Semika Shaw had died from the same injuries alleged by Ms. Haynes. Marcella Choung, who had no monetary interest, had spelled out essentially all of Gosnell’s criminal practices to the department. The woman we have referred to as Alice and her companion had accused Gosnell of locking the companion in the clinic to prevent him from getting medical help for Alice. Accordingly, when Ms. Haynes alleged that the doctor did not summon help for her, but left her for four hours, bleeding and in pain, that should have warranted at least a phone call to Ms. Haynes.

Yet Ruiz, apparently, did not even read the complaint carefully. He claimed before the Grand Jury that no one investigated the allegation that rescue was not called for four hours because it was not contained in the legal filing in Ms. Haynes’s medical malpractice suit. In fact, it was.

 Prosecuting Attorney Ruiz testified that it was unfortunate that Haynes’s attorney “did not lay out all of the facts in that complaint.” Even leaving aside the erroneous claim that the complaint did not include an allegation about failing to call an ambulance in a timely fashion, the prosecutor’s testimony points out a serious flaw in the Department of State’s procedures. The department’s disciplinary responsibilities should not depend on the quality of a plaintiff’s representation. At least some independent fact-finding should take place. At a minimum, the complainant should be interviewed.

Had the prosecutor asked an investigator to call Ms. Haynes, he would have learned what inspector Gillespie did a few months later – that in Ms. Haynes’s case, Gosnell had locked her family members out of the clinic, preventing them from discovering that she was bleeding profusely after a bungled procedure and from summoning help. He would also have learned that Gosnell was violating the Abortion Control Act.

 *****   **Ruiz, for example, when asked how many complaints against the doctor had come in, said that the department had been notified of only two lawsuits involving Gosnell. These, he said, were Alice’s in 2005 and Dana Haynes’s in 2008. He also acknowledged that the Board had received Marcella Choung’s complaint.** <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> * <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> Both Ruiz and Maloney seemed to be unaware of the other complaints that Department of State attorneys had reviewed since 2002, including the case of Semika Shaw, whose death was reported to the department by Gosnell’s insurance carrier, pursuant to the MCARE law.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> ***** <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> **Other prosecutors, however, seem not to have even looked for prior complaints. Ruiz’s account of “prior history” includes only the complaint from 1992, for which Gosnell received a reprimand.** <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> *

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> The testimony of the one prosecutor who appeared before the Grand Jury revealed a lack of knowledge about certain aspects of state law and Department of State procedures that indicates a lack of training. For example, Ruiz said he was unaware that insurance companies had to report medical liability settlements to the department, even though Gosnell’s file contained just such a report relating to Semika Shaw... This lack of training is apparent in all of the departmental attorneys who did nothing to investigate the mayhem at Gosnell’s clinic.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> ***** <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> **...With the spotlight on them, state officials finally conducted a thorough investigation. Prosecuting Attorney Ruiz went back through the complaints that had come in over the years....** <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> *

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> Ruiz, the prosecuting attorney, told us that the Department of State has always accepted complaints from any source – third parties, local, state, and federal agencies, newspaper stories, basically anyone who wants to file a complaint. He further testified that the complaints can be conveyed by telephone and do not have to be made on the formal complaint form. He said that any complaint would be logged in and considered.

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> ***** <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> **Prosecuting Attorney Ruiz repeatedly mentioned the Pennsylvania Department of State’s desire to be considered a law enforcement agency. He suggested to the Grand Jury that the department could have done a better job of investigating complaints against Gosnell if it had had the full powers of law enforcement. We are unconvinced. The Board of Medicine already has subpoena powers that could and should have been used to obtain files and documents that could have substantiated the complaints received. Yet it did not use this power.** <span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> *

<span style="font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace;"> ....Had Ruiz known that Gosnell’s insurers and a State of Pennsylvania insurance fund had paid $1.7 million to five women whose uteruses, cervixes, and bowels he had perforated, he might have viewed Dana Haynes’s case differently. If he had noticed that, in 2007, Gosnell paid $10,000 to settle a civil lawsuit for performing an abortion on a minor without parental consent, Ruiz could have charged Gosnell with a violation of the Abortion Control Act.