Former Nurse Pleads Not Guilty
A prosecutor said Monday he will seek the death penalty against a former nurse charged in the deaths of 10 patients at a veterans hospital a decade ago.
Boone County Prosecutor Kevin Crane announced his decision in court before Richard Allen Williams, 36, entered not guilty pleas to 10 counts of first-degree murder.
When Williams entered the courtroom, he smiled and raised his handcuffed wrists to wave to relatives.
Crane said the deaths fit Missouri law's requirements for capital punishment, including that they were "outrageous or wantonly vile ... in that they involved depravity of mind."
Williams' public defender, Kathryn Benson, told reporters she was surprised by Crane's decision to seek the death penalty.
"There is not one shred of direct evidence in this case," Benson said. "It's based on a bunch of statistics that are incomplete."
Authorities said Williams was a nurse for all 10 patients, who died from March to July 1992 at the Truman Veterans Administration Hospital in Columbia.
Crane has declined to discuss any alleged motive.
In all, 41 patients died in 1992 under Williams' care. While all of those deaths were considered suspicious, authorities said exhumations in 1993 yielded usable tissue samples from just 10 bodies.
A recently developed tissue test found the presence of a paralyzing muscle relaxant, succinylcholine, in all 10 of those bodies, authorities said. None had been prescribed the drug.
Authorities said Williams had easy access to the drug.
Crane said he decided to seek the death penalty after conferring with at least one representative of each patient's family.
However, not all of the dead patients' relatives supported that move.
"I don't believe in the death penalty. I don't believe that my mom would," said Cindy Owens. "I would prefer him to be in prison."
Medical experts said Owens' mother, 69-year-old Agnes Conover, was one of those who was given succinylcholine.
Williams left the VA hospital in early 1994 and is no longer a nurse.
By Scott Charton