D.A. Won’t Press Charges in Death of Andy Warhol

The district attorney said today that he will not press charges against doctors and nurses who treated pop artist Andy Warhol before he died after routine gallbladder surgery last February.

“There is insufficient evidence of criminal liability to initiate a grand jury investigation of Andrew Warhol’s death,” Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert Morgenthau said in a letter to the city’s chief medical examiner.

An autopsy showed that the pop artist’s heart began to fail a significant time before it was reported to doctors at New York Hospital, prompting Medical Examiner Elliot Gross to call for a criminal investigation to determine how Warhol was being treated in the hours before and after the operation.

But Morgenthau said Gross’ medical investigation “failed to disclose any evidence that Warhol’s death was a homicide.”

He said the investigation showed that the conduct of a chiropractor who treated Warhol before his hospitalization and of a private-duty nurse who looked after him while he was in the hospital were not criminally responsible for the heart attack.

Warhol died of a disturbance of the heart rhythm, according to the autopsy.