Doctor Accused of Killing Dying Patient Cleared

A doctor accused of killing a dying cancer patient with an injection of drugs was acquitted of murder Thursday.

Dr. Ernesto Pinzon-Reyes was accused of injecting a deadly mix of morphine, Valium and potassium chloride into 70-year-old Rosario Gurrieri last October after his family begged for something to make his pain more bearable.

Potassium chloride is sometimes used for executions. Pinzon’s lawyers said he used it only to slow the man’s wildly racing heart and ease his discomfort.

“God made the decision to take Mr. Gurrieri’s soul to heaven,” defense lawyer Jack Edmund said earlier in his closing argument.

Prosecutors contended Pinzon knew the drugs would kill Gurrieri and murdered him as surely as if he had shot or stabbed him.

“What’s the meaning of life, folks? A man’s heart was beating. He was alive,” Aguero said. “Gurrieri didn’t die by coincidence.”

Pinzon, who faced life behind bars if convicted of first-degree murder, did not testify. Jurors deliberated five hours before clearing him.

“I think I am a strong man and this has made me stronger,” the 37-year-old physician said as he hugged his lawyers and relatives. “It was a terrible misunderstanding.”

Family members tearfully testified that they begged nurses to do something for Gurrieri’s pain. He was gravely ill with lung cancer and had been given only two days to live when admitted a day earlier to the hospital in this Central Florida town 90 miles southeast of Tampa.

Pinzon, the doctor on call, was summoned by a nurse who refused his telephone order to give Gurrieri a large dose of morphine.

Gurrieri’s daughter, Celeste Pipitone, testified that the family went with the doctor into her father’s room and watched as he injected medication into a tube in her father’s arm. Gurrieri died a short time later.