Judge orders another Desai mental evaluation, this one for fraud case
Dr. Dipak Desai has been ordered transferred into federal custody so that a mental evaluation can be done to determine whether he is competent to accept a plea deal in his health care fraud case stemming from the 2007 hepatitis C outbreak.
Senior U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks entered the order Tuesday after Desai’s lawyers and federal prosecutors agreed Desai should have the examination under federal supervision.
Both sides signed a stipulation agreeing that the evaluation is “appropriate to comply with due process and protect the record from collateral attack.”
Desai, 64, who gave up his medical license after health officials disclosed the outbreak in 2008, is to be returned to state custody after the evaluation is completed. He has been serving time at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last month that lawyers for both Desai and his co-defendant in the case, his former clinic manager Tonya Rushing, were close to plea agreements. But Desai’s lead lawyer, Richard Wright, told Hicks last month that he was concerned strokes have left Desai unable to understand the deal.
A two-week deadline prosecutors had given Rushing to accept an agreement has passed, but there was no word as of Friday on whether she accepted it.
Desai and Rushing are to stand trial before Hicks on Aug. 8 if no plea agreements are reached.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Crane Pomerantz agreed to Desai’s psychiatric evaluation, but stressed in the stipulation that he continues to maintain Desai is competent to stand trial.
Questions about Desai’s mental health contributed to a two-year delay in the state trial.
He spent six months being evaluated at the state’s secure mental health facility in Sparks before experts found him competent to stand trial.
The experts concluded he was exaggerating the effects of strokes he suffered before and after the hepatitis outbreak.
On July 1, a jury convicted Desai of all 27 criminal counts related to the outbreak, including second-degree murder in the death of infected patient Rodolfo Meana, 77. Co-defendant Ronald Lakeman, a nurse anesthetist, was acquitted of the murder charge but found guilty of 16 counts.
District Judge Valerie Adair later sentenced Desai to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 18 years. She ordered Lakeman to spend eight to 21 years behind bars.
Both Desai and Rushing, a prosecution witness at the state trial, are facing one count of conspiracy and 25 counts of health care fraud in the federal case.
The case, filed in April 2011, has been delayed a half-dozen times, primarily because federal prosecutors agreed to allow the state case to proceed first.
Desai and Rushing are accused of carrying out a scheme from January 2005 to February 2008 to inflate the length of medical procedures and overbill health insurance companies.
The state charges, which included criminal neglect of patients and insurance fraud, involved the 2007 hepatitis C infections of Meana and six other patients at Desai’s now-closed Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada on Shadow Lane.
Health officials genetically linked the blood-borne virus in those patients to the clinic.
Prosecutors contended unsafe injection practices involving the anesthetic propofol led to the outbreak
Double-dipping syringes into propofol bottles used on multiple patients spread the virus from source patients infected with hepatitis C on two dates in 2007, prosecutors alleged.
Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135. Follow @JGermanRJ on Twitter.
