Clinic Owner Pleads Not Guilty to Illicit Practice of Medicine

The owner of a family planning clinic, arrested last week in connection with the death of a 27-year-old pregnant woman, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to three counts alleging the improper practice of medicine.

Orange County Municipal Judge Gary P. Ryan reduced bail for Alicia Ruiz Hanna, 31, from $100,000 to $25,000 and ordered her to appear for a preliminary hearing Feb. 4.

Hanna, who operated the unlicensed Clinica Feminina de la Comunidad in Santa Ana, where Angela Nieto Sanchez was treated several hours before she died, faces a maximum of three years in prison if convicted on all counts, attorneys said.

After the hearing, Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. King said his office decided not to file charges against the clinic’s receptionist, Isasemena Araceli Mendoza, 20, of Orange, who had been arrested earlier.

King said that more serious charges may be filed against Hanna and that charges may be refiled against Mendoza, pending results of toxicological and tissue tests.

Hanna’s attorney, Marshall M. Schulman, asked the judge to reduce bail to $10,000, citing Hanna’s 30-year residence in Santa Ana. Schulman also said that Hanna, the mother of two, had no criminal record.

But King, who offered a narrative of what prosecutors believe led to Sanchez’s death, asked for bail of $100,000, saying that Hanna did have an arrest record. Although she is a legal resident alien, the prosecutor said Hanna represented both a flight risk and “a serious danger to the community.”

King said that when Sanchez went to the clinic for an abortion, Hanna, who is neither a doctor nor a nurse, gave her an injection.

Sanchez “had some kind of reaction, a violent reaction” in the back of the clinic, while Sanchez’s 12-year-old daughter and her 3-year-old son waited for her in the lobby, King told the judge. Later, as a result of the injection, Sanchez died, he said. Sanchez was pronounced dead several hours after she visited the clinic.

Last week, the daughter said a clinic employee had come into the waiting area after some time and said her mother had requested that she drive herself and her brother home. The girl told the employee she couldn’t drive.

During the court proceedings, King added that Mendoza, the receptionist, estimated that Hanna has performed abortions “in the double digits” without the presence of a doctor or nurse.

Schulman interrupted King repeatedly, objecting to the extended presentation as improper and “dramatic.” The defense attorney said after the hearing that King had created “a pretty picture for the media.”

Despite his client’s jail stay, the attorney said, Hanna “seems to be holding up fine.”