Prosecutor Says Greed Drove Dentist

Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a Pasadena dentist charged with over-sedating young patients to the point that one girl suffered brain damage. Prosecutors portrayed the dentist as driven by greed, while a defense lawyer called her a caring professional who never intended to hurt anyone.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lance Ito had attorneys deliver so-called “mini statements,” laying out the case for prospective jurors to ensure that they better understand the issues and players in the case of Drueciel Ford.

Ford, 50, is facing more than five dozen charges, including numerous counts of felony child endangerment and one count of conspiracy. She could be sentenced to more than 30 years in prison if convicted.

The case is part of a larger debate over whether--and when--it is appropriate to charge a medical professional with a crime for problems that occur during treatment.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Albert MacKenzie told prospective jurors that the evidence will show that Ford for more than 10 years used unlicensed assistants to do fillings, tooth extractions and root canals.

He said Ford “recklessly overdosed” the children on chloral hydrate, deeply sedating them without the appropriate monitoring so she could see more patients.

One of those alleged overdoses in March 1999 left a then-15-year-old patient, Melissa McGrath, “dead in the office for 28 minutes,” he alleged. The girl had suffered cardiac arrest.

Revived by doctors, McGrath was left with a severe brain injury, MacKenzie said. This and other alleged overdoses were the fallout of Ford’s wish to earn $1 million a year, he said.

“The defendant had a desire to make a great deal of money,” MacKenzie said.

One of Ford’s lawyers, Edi M.O. Faal, countered that there was not “any evidence of criminal intention” and said investigators from Pasadena police and the state dental board had unjustly turned a civil dispute into a criminal proceeding.

Faal told prospective jurors that the evidence would show that Ford is “a highly qualified pediatric dentist” of 21 years whose patients came from other dentists.

“You are going to hear inflammatory words like ‘Melissa was killed’ and ‘Melissa was dead,’ ” he said, asking jurors not to be swayed.

Faal told jurors that McGrath did not get an overdose of chloral hydrate, an oral sedative, as prosecutors suggest. He said that Ford’s assistant did give a second dose of chloral hydrate to McGrath without Ford’s approval, but that it didn’t cause the girl’s cardiac arrest.

Faal argues that McGrath failed to tell Ford and her staff that she was using birth control pills, which could have led to her inability to breathe. Ford’s attorneys have previously noted that prosecutors have no blood samples to prove the level of dosage given McGrath.

The dozens of other counts against Ford, Faal said, stem from parents drawn to the case by media coverage of the dentist’s arrest in March 2000. Faal said those parents can do little more than describe their children as leaving Ford’s Green Street office in a sleepy state. “A lot of people came out of the woodwork thinking money could be made,” Faal said.

But MacKenzie in an interview likened Ford’s actions to those of a parent who leaves a child locked in a car on a hot day.

He plans to call one of Ford’s assistants and McGrath’s mother to testify to the amount of chloral hydrate given to the teenager, as well as two experts who will estimate that the dose was six times the amount usually given to sedate a child.

That dosage, prosecution medical experts allege, resulted in McGrath’s brain damage after her heart and breathing stopped. Another assistant, Tina Tate, 34, has sworn under oath that she did numerous dental procedures and sometimes drank alcohol with Ford on the job, MacKenzie said. Charges were dropped against Tate last month after she gave a sworn statement. She was arrested in Iowa after fleeing there.

“Witnesses will testify Dr. Ford pulled her tooth after she knew Melissa wasn’t breathing,” MacKenzie said. McGrath, now 17, is expected to testify. She slurs her words and is incapable of speaking above a whisper.

However, prosecutors face obstacles. MacKenzie revealed Monday that witness Janice McGrath, the teenager’s mother, has been charged with welfare fraud and perjury in an unrelated case.

Faal told Ito that he wants to call Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Kelberg, who headed that office’s specialized medical legal unit, as a defense witness to show that the case was shopped around. Kelberg rejected the case before MacKenzie took it.

Jury selection is expected to take a few days with the main case expected to begin next week and run to Feb 14. Ito warned prospective jurors that the trial is going to be “long and complicated.”