Prosecutor: Desai ‘crazy like a fox’

Chief Deputy District Attorney Mike Staudaher usually measures his courtroom remarks in the high-profile criminal case against Dr. Dipak Desai.

But on Tuesday, as lead defense lawyer Richard Wright sparred repeatedly with District Judge Valerie Adair over Desai's competency to stand trial, Staudaher interjected himself, leaving no doubt where he stood in the heated debate.

"He's crazy like a fox," Staudaher told Adair. "He's as competent as you and I are."

Staudaher suggested Desai was trying to deceive the court into believing that two strokes left him unable to assist his lawyers in the complicated case that sprang from the hepatitis C outbreak.

"He knows exactly what he's doing," Staudaher said. "As long as he gets what he wants, he's going to act like a babbling idiot."

Desai, sitting behind the defense table, looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as the lead prosecutor ripped into him.

After Staudaher's candid words, Adair decided from the bench that Wright did not raise any new issues to justify another look into whether Desai is competent.

Wright had sought to revisit his client's mental state after a Reno psychiatrist hired by the defense concluded in November that Desai was unable to assist his attorneys.

But Adair said she wasn't persuaded that his condition has changed since state medical experts more than a year ago found him competent.

"What's different here that hasn't been thoroughly addressed?" she asked.

Afterward, Wright declined to say whether he would appeal Adair's decision to the Nevada Supreme Court.

Wright first challenged Desai's competency after his June 2010 indictment, but Staudaher contended the former gastroenterologist was faking his impairments from the two strokes to obstruct the criminal case.

After a six-month evaluation at Nevada's secure mental hospital in Sparks in 2011, medical experts there concluded Desai was exaggerating the effects of the strokes. Desai, 63, and nurse anesthetist Ronald Lakeman, 65, are to stand trial before Adair on April 22.

They face a series of charges, including second-degree murder, theft, insurance fraud and obtaining money under false pretenses.

The murder charge stems from the death of Rodolfo Meana, a victim of the 2007 outbreak.

Another nurse charged in the case, Keith Mathahs, 76, pleaded guilty last month and agreed to testify against Desai and Lakeman.

Desai performed the colonoscopy on Meana that led to his hepatitis infection, and Mathahs participated in the procedure.

Lakeman did not participate, but prosecutors contend he was just as culpable in Meana's death under the theory of the murder charge, which alleges all three defendants were part of the conspiracy that endangered the lives of Desai's patients.

The indictment accuses Desai and the nurse anesthetists of unlawfully "introducing the hepatitis C virus" into Meana's body during the colonoscopy.

Meana, 77, died in April of complications from hepatitis C in his native Philippines.

His infection was among seven that health officials genetically linked to Desai's main clinic, the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada.

Health officials concluded Meana and five other patients contracted hepatitis C through unsafe injection practices on Sept. 21, 2007. Another patient was infected on July 25, 2007.

Contact Jeff German at jgerman@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-8135.