Trial in New Orleans

Yesterday’s USA Today featured a story about the owners of St. Rita’s Nursing Home in New Orleans, LA, whose criminal trial starts next week. The owners are charged with 35 counts of negligent homicide and 24 counts of cruelty to the infirm for the deaths and suffering of residents who were not evacuated before Hurricane Katrina.

The case against the nursing home owners is being prosecuted by the state’s attorney general, who sought – and recently failed to get – an indictment of a physician who was accused of murdering patients at a New Orleans hospital in the terrible aftermath of Katrina. I recently wrote about this case.

Wrote USA Today about the nursing home:

For all the misery Katrina unleashed and all the missteps and bad decisions surrounding it, the [owners of the nursing home] are the only two people to face trial for them. Were they arrogantly responsible….or are they scapegoats…?