'Angel Of Death' Trial Opens
As the murder trial of the man who has been called the "Angel of Death" began Tuesday, prosecutors planned to paint a picture of a person who hated old people, reports CBS News Correspondent Drew Levinson.
Majors is charged with killing seven elderly patients at Indiana's Vermillion County Hospital. Prosecutors say between 1993 and 1995, while working in the intensive care unit, Majors injected patients with deadly drugs.
The case started when nursing supervisor Dawn Stirek grew alarmed at a rise in deaths at the hospital's intensive care unit.
Stirek began checking employee time cards and found that Majors was on duty for 130 of 147 deaths in the ICU from May 1993 to March 1995. In each of the previous four years, no more than 31 ICU patients died.
Special Judge Ernest Yelton has barred prosecutors from using Stirek's study and a different analysis by a consultant that found ICU patients were 43 times more likely to die when Majors was on duty.
The judge agreed with defense attorneys that such statistics could overly influence jurors, suggesting more murders without requiring proof from the state.
Stirek, the first of two witnesses called Tuesday, testified she reported her findings to hospital executives in March 1995. Majors was promptly suspended from his job, she told the jury.
"I was worried it was bad luck that one person could be present for so many deaths," she said.
Prosecutors say it wasn't a coincidence.
"The evidence in this case will reveal the story of a man who took into his hands the kind of power we as a society have decided belongs in the hands of God," prosecutor Nina Alexander said in her opening statement. "This man exercised this power on the sick and the elderly."
Alexander said medical experts will testify that the death of each patient was consistent with injections of potassium chloride. Vials containing traces of the drug and syringes were found at Majors' home and in his van, police said.
Defense attorney I. Marshall Pinkus told the jury that the patients were in fragile health and that doctors for the seven patients will testify in Majors' defense.
"They know these people better than any of the other experts and doctors you will hear from in this case," Pinkus said.
Pinkus said some patients and coworkers at the hospital considered Majors a hardworking and sympathetic nurse. John Albrect, the doctor in charge of the intensive care unit, has twice said in pretrial hearings that he doesn't believe Majors murdered patients.
Majors has remained in jail without bond since his arrest Dec. 29, 1997, after a state police investigation. The state nursing board suspended Majors' license in 1995 for five years for providing medical care -- including giving injections -- that went beyond his authority.
"I would never do anything to shorten anybody's life," he told reporters. "I'm not God."
Majors' lawyes said authorities have made him a scapegoat after spending almost three years and $1.5 million looking into the deaths.