The prosecution rested their case in The State of Texas v. Robert Roberts yesterday but not before a heretofore unknown 3rd nurse took the stand and testified she also sent a letter of complaint to the Texas Medical Board  concerning the medical practice of Dr. Rolando Arafiles.

Winkler County Memorial Hospital nurses Anne Mitchell and Vickie Galle, who were responsible for Quality Assurance and Medical staff credentialing at the facility sent an anonymous letter to the Board (though they revealed themselves to the Board and the Board kept the letter anonymous) listing specific patient care incidents involving Arafiles. After his golfing buddy and former business partner, Dr. Arafiles, came to him complaining someone was making trouble for him with the Board, Sheriff Roberts began an investigation complete with search warrants for computers and deceptive representations to the Board. As a result he arrested Mitchell and Galle and charged them with felony misuse of government information.

He did not however charge or arrest Naomi Warren, a nurse practitioner at Winkler, who also sent a letter of complaint to the Board around the same time…and signed her name to it. She took the stand yesterday and her testimony was damning. Warren had left the hospital for a job in Montana by the time Roberts was arresting people. She told the jury of her fear of imminent arrest and the inappropriate influence county attorney Scott Tidwell and hospital administrator Stan Wiley had over the medical staff and their meetings. It has become clear just how entrenched the good ol’ boys network was in the county and the hospital. A county attorney having ANYTHING to do with medical staff meetings at the county hospital? Are you kidding?

OA Online sums Warren’s testimony up:

“I believed that Sheriff Roberts would find out who filed this report. I just believed he would,” she said. “I was absolutely sure I was going to be arrested.”

However Warren, who had by then left the Winkler County hospital, was never sought for prosecution.

In the complaint lodged by the Texas Medical Board against Arafiles, the board claims it notified Roberts and County Attorney Scott Tidwell that the nurses made the report legally, but the two officials continued the prosecution of the nurses regardless.

Warren also said she was worried about how the medical staff meetings were being run.

After the January meeting when she made a presentation against Arafiles, she was approached by Tidwell, Warren said.

“I told him, I said, ‘You know if we had only had the opportunity to meet as Dr. Pham had requested, we could have solved this thing. We could have put it down,’ ” she said.

But Tidwell told her he and Wiley spoke with Arafiles about the surgeries he performed and why they were wrong, so the two decided to cancel the medical staff meeting that Pham called.

Warren said it concerned her that Wiley and Tidwell were controlling medical staff meetings instead of the medical staff themselves.

And from MyWestTexas.com:

The third nurse who sent in a letter to the Texas Medical Board concerning the new doctor at the Winkler County Hospital told Midland jurors Friday that she reported him as a precautionary measure for her patients.

“Dr. Arafiles is providing dangerous care. If we don’t do something, someone is going to die or get seriously ill, and their blood is going to be on our hands,” Naomi Warren testified about what she told fellow nurse Anne Mitchell. “Either you report him or I will. Or we both do it.”

On June 1, 2009, Mitchell and former nurse Vickilyn Galle were fired from their long-term employment with the hospital after Winkler County Sheriff Robert Roberts began an investigation into who sent an anonymous letter to the board concerning the new doctor, Rolando Arafiles.

Roberts is being tried this week on felony charges of retaliation and misuse of official information. If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison. He is accused of using his position as a law enforcement officer to obtain a copy of the report, which led to the identification of the nurses, their arrests on harassment charges and later dismissals from the hospital staff.

Warren told the court Mitchell was concerned about sending the letter to the board because she feared she would be fired.

“They can’t fire you for this; it’s confidential. His peers have to evaluate his care,” Warren told her. While Mitchell and Galle sent their letters in anonymously, Warren — who already had left and was working in a Monahans clinic — signed her name to her letter, court records showed.

Later, when Warren heard both Mitchell and Galle had been fired by the hospital administrator, she said she was appalled, livid and afraid. She told the court she began to mentally prepare for when she would be arrested.

“I don’t feel responsible, but I feel guilty and left out of it,” she told jurors when asked how she felt that Mitchell and Galle were fired because of their report. “I was spared the humiliation, and I feel bad about it.”

Warren was the last witness to testify for the state on the fifth day of the trial. Prosecutors with the Texas Attorney General’s Office rested their case at 11:40 a.m.

After the state rested their case, the defense made the obligatory motion for a directed verdict of aquittal claiming the state failed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt, which the judge denied. The defense called 6 witnesses in the afternoon, all of whom were character witnesses for Arafiles or employees of the hospital testifying that Mitchell had a strong or blunt personality and called Dr. Arafiles a “quack” and a “witch doctor”. The state objected numerous times, asserting that Mitchell was not on trail. The objections were sustained.

Law Med now makes a prediction as to the jury’s verdict (based on the prediction that the defense can present little more than ‘character witnesses’): GUILTY

The case is expected to wrap by Wednesday.

From KWES NewsWest 9

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