Butcher of Women in Philly Arrested.

[Simon_Jester]

The one thing I think any rational person can agree on is that there should not be no standards whatsoever, which is basically the regulatory regime that Gosnell operated in: he was in a total enforcement vacuum.

And why was he in a total enforcement vacuum? I suggest you read what I posted from the GJ report.

I did. "There should be standards" is something a man can say after reading that report, not so?

I think if you're going to apply inspection standards to abortion clinics, the standards need to be tailored to what the clinics do and do not do.

Oh, the GJ report is quite specific on what standards that liposuction and colonoscopy clinics meet that Abortion facilities don't:

You missed the point. Again. Take an abortion clinic and a laser vision surgery clinic. The laser clinic needs opthamologists on staff; the abortion clinic does not. Both clinics have different specialized equipment, and so on.

Therefore, a good set of regulations for each would include regulations that are the same in broad* but different in detail, allowing clinics that do one thing (any one thing) to meet requirements that ensure their safety for patients, without being harassed for failing to follow regulations that make no sense in their case.

*And yes, "must keep surgical implements sterile" is a broad requirement.

[MKSheppard]

Gosnell has been denied bail and the dragnet is rounding up his co-conspirators:

LINK

Mt. Lebanon man held on murder charges in abortion clinic probe
Thursday, January 20, 2011
By Anya Sostek, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A sweeping investigation of a "house of horrors" Philadelphia abortion clinic included the arrest of a man in Mt. Lebanon Wednesday on murder charges.

Detectives from the Allegheny County district attorney's office arrested Steven Massof, 48, at a home on Marlin Drive West in Mt. Lebanon. For the nearly five years that Mr. Massof worked at Women's Medical Society clinic, he posed as a doctor though he did not have a medical license, according to a grand jury report.

In that time, according to the report, Mr. Massof admitted that there were about 100 instances in which he severed the spinal cords of babies who were breathing or had other signs of life.

Kermit Gosnell, the proprietor of the clinic, was charged with the deaths of one adult and seven babies in his clinic, described as a grossly unsanitary operation that doubled as a prescription drug mill.

Mr. Massof is charged with two counts of homicide and with conspiracy to commit murder for killing viable babies born alive at the clinic.

For pretending to be a doctor and illegally dispensing narcotics, Mr. Massof also is charged with racketeering, theft by deception and drug violations.

According to the grand jury report, Mr. Massof graduated in 1998 from St. George University Medical School in Grenada. While he had "taken and passed some of the tests necessary to become a doctor in the United States, he was never accepted into a residency program" and was thus unlicensed to practice medicine in Pennsylvania.

He worked at the Philadelphia clinic from July 2003 to June 2008. An online resume of Mr. Massof's posted on LinkedIn lists his most recent job as a team leader for the Dial America telemarketing company in Pittsburgh, where he had worked from April of last year until the present.

A woman who answered the phone at Dial America said that the company had no comment on Mr. Massof's status there.

According to the grand jury report, Mr. Massof was working in Pittsburgh as a bartender and a cook before starting work at the clinic.

Before graduating from medical school in Grenada, Mr. Massof worked for five years as a research supervisor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He graduated from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, in 1986.

Mr. Massof was often the only purported doctor working in the clinic during daylight hours, from noon until Dr. Gosnell arrived at the clinic as late as 9 or 10 p.m., according to grand jury report.

The report described the Women's Medical Society as a "prescription mill" by day and an "abortion mill" by night, saying that the clinic would dispense prescriptions for Oxycontin and other controlled substances.

Mr. Massof described his duties at the clinic in his LinkedIn resume as surveillance and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and as identifying infectious diseases in children that are preventable by vaccines.

Mr. Massof was paid in cash $300 per week and an additional $30 for each second or third-trimester abortion patient, according to the grand jury report.

Last year, he was sued in civil court in Allegheny County by Arrowood Indemnity Co. for failure to repay more than $21,872 of a $65,000 loan.

A phone message left at Mr. Massof's residence in Mt. Lebanon was not returned on Wednesday.

[MKSheppard]

So rumors have the Philly DA -- R. Seth Williams, considering the death penalty for Gosnell.

If you want irony, look up the DA's background.

[Broomstick]

What? That he was given up for adoption?

Yeah, I suppose it's a little ironic if you stretch, but he's NOT prosecuting this guy for abortion, he's prosecuting him for murder and infanticide.

[Eternal_Freedom]

And that's a damn good thing too. I must say I never understood the statute of limitations being only one or two years for infanticide. But then again, I never understood the point of a statute of limitations in the first place.

There are very few people I would happily condemn to death but this guy (Gosnell) is one of them.

[MKSheppard]

Yeah, I suppose it's a little ironic if you stretch, but he's NOT prosecuting this guy for abortion, he's prosecuting him for murder and infanticide.

Wrong.

Charges as per the DA's office

(huge huge list, snipped down to the revelant charges)

Link

Kermit Barron Gosnell
» Abortion at 24 or more weeks (33 counts), 18 Pa.C.S. § 3211, F-3
» Conspiracy (Abortion, 24 or more weeks), 18 Pa.C.S. § 903, F-3

Pearl Gosnell
» Abortion, 24 or more weeks, 18 Pa.C.S. § 3211, F-3
» Conspiracy (Abortion, 24 or more weeks), 18 Pa.C.S. § 903, F-3

Lynda Williams
» Abortion at 24 or more weeks (13 counts), 18 Pa.C.S. § 3211, F-3

Sherry West
» Abortion at 24 or more weeks (1 counts), 18 Pa.C.S. § 3211, F-3
» Conspiracy (Abortion, 24 or more weeks), 18 Pa.C.S. § 903, F-3

[Glocksman]

And that's a damn good thing too. I must say I never understood the statute of limitations being only one or two years for infanticide. But then again, I never understood the point of a statute of limitations in the first place.

There are very few people I would happily condemn to death but this guy (Gosnell) is one of them.

IIRC, the concept is that if an offender manages to go x amount of time without reoffending, then justice is not served by punishing him needlessly.

IOW, if an 18 year old who robs a store or shoplifts leads a clean life after the robbery and is found out when he's 55, then justice isn't served by uprooting him from his job/family/whatever and sending him to the state pen.

There are exceptions, and murder is chief among them.
Murder someone at 18, and even if you're 80, you're still held liable for the crime.

[Stofsk]

And that's a damn good thing too. I must say I never understood the statute of limitations being only one or two years for infanticide. But then again, I never understood the point of a statute of limitations in the first place.

There are very few people I would happily condemn to death but this guy (Gosnell) is one of them.

IIRC, the concept is that if an offender manages to go x amount of time without reoffending, then justice is not served by punishing him needlessly.

IOW, if an 18 year old who robs a store or shoplifts leads a clean life after the robbery and is found out when he's 55, then justice isn't served by uprooting him from his job/family/whatever and sending him to the state pen.

There are exceptions, and murder is chief among them.
Murder someone at 18, and even if you're 80, you're still held liable for the crime.

There's a little more to it. The greater the amount of time that passes between the act and getting caught, the greater the likelihood that a miscarriage of justice will occur. I read a book by a prominent Australian QC who advocates putting a statute of limitations on a lot of crimes which currently don't have one, including murder, simply because of your example - the idea that someone kills at 18 and doesn't get nabbed until decades have passed - would give a huge risk that the accused might be the wrong target unless there was some pretty compelling evidence.

Stuff like forensic evidence would be okay in those sort of circumstances, but if you're relying on witnesses, then their memory is going to suffer over the decades to the point where how do you know they're remembering clearly? This is perhaps more relevant to child sex cases where the victim gets it in their head that they were abused as a child; and it usually winds up being their word against the accused's. In some of these cases, we have no idea whether or not the alleged victim was ever victimised. Memory is faulty, especially after a long time has passed, and the idea that they were abused might have been put into their heads by incompetent psychologists or psychiatrists. (I am p. sure something like this has been in the news before)

I think his idea has merit, and in cold case murders I think having the investigative purpose of finding compelling evidence might make things difficult but I'm not sure it would be too onerous a burden, but certainly in cases where there is little to no forensic evidence and constitutes a 'his/her word against the accused's' a statute of limitations might prevent gross miscarriages of justice.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

We shouldn't mistake ourselves into thinking that this is anything other than reprehensible, or an example of a shop of horrors. By 24 weeks you do indeed have a fully developed human being who can survive outside of the womb. Only a psychopath could seriously support abortion past that point. Shep is quite legitimate in emphasizing that, it is abortion, but also by that late stage in the pregnancy I really hope nobody will argue that it shouldn't carry the death penalty like murder does. After all, how many internet toughguy fests has this board had in the past decade over eighteen month or two year old babies getting beaten to death by the mother's boyfriend when he's high on meth? It's not really all that different.

[Eris]

We shouldn't mistake ourselves into thinking that this is anything other than reprehensible, or an example of a shop of horrors. By 24 weeks you do indeed have a fully developed human being who can survive outside of the womb. Only a psychopath could seriously support abortion past that point. Shep is quite legitimate in emphasizing that, it is abortion, but also by that late stage in the pregnancy I really hope nobody will argue that it shouldn't carry the death penalty like murder does. After all, how many internet toughguy fests has this board had in the past decade over eighteen month or two year old babies getting beaten to death by the mother's boyfriend when he's high on meth? It's not really all that different.

Yes-ish? At 24 weeks, survival rates are, with modern medicine, still as low as 40%, although sometimes somewhat higher to be fair. Without modern medicine, it might as well be 0%. I can't confirm it's actually unsurvivable, but it'd be statistically negligible. At 24 weeks, you're just starting to develop the structures that produce surfactant in your lungs. Without that, your lungs collapse and you can't breathe, and you die in short order. We can help this with modern medicine, because we can give you some surfactant, and a bajillion life supporting devices, until you can breathe on your own. Honestly, I would argue that this may not constitute a fully developed human being who can survive outside the uterus, though.

And this doesn't even begin to start up the arguments about allocation of scarce medical resources—premies in the NICU are pretty much unrivaled in terms of dollars per life saved—especially when you take in to account that even saving them will frequently leave you with a person who will be crippled for life with a host of developmental disorders.

Now, I don't want people to think I'm advocating just tossing out the lot as lost causes, but let's be realistic. We're already consigning people to death who would be much cheaper to treat, and would make, on average, more complete recoveries. Perhaps it's my public health background showing. And I would of course agree that the person in this thread was beyond despicable, for all sorts of reasons, and I also agree that there is an advancing degree of humanity, if you will, whereby a fetus become progressively more of a person, and by 24 weeks it's largely established, and by 28 probably pretty much all there, although I'd have to do more research before saying so definitively. Although I would still caution us all to remember that through our generally admirable instincts to idolise babies, we are condemning many more to suffer and die by prioritising extremely early premies. This is actually been a growing problem with the continued development and advancement of NICU medicine, but is the subject of a different thread.

As a side note, I would actually also disagree that these people deserve the death penalty. But largely because I wouldn't prescribe the death penalty for murder, either, for a variety of reasons that are likewise the subject of a different thread.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, I suppose it's a little ironic if you stretch, but he's NOT prosecuting this guy for abortion, he's prosecuting him for murder and infanticide.

Wrong.

Charges as per the DA's office

While legally it may be charged as illegal abortion, if the result is a living, breathing baby it's actually infanticide. At least, that's how the jury will see it, and likely how most others will see it.

We shouldn't mistake ourselves into thinking that this is anything other than reprehensible, or an example of a shop of horrors. By 24 weeks you do indeed have a fully developed human being who can survive outside of the womb. Only a psychopath could seriously support abortion past that point. Shep is quite legitimate in emphasizing that, it is abortion, but also by that late stage in the pregnancy I really hope nobody will argue that it shouldn't carry the death penalty like murder does. After all, how many internet toughguy fests has this board had in the past decade over eighteen month or two year old babies getting beaten to death by the mother's boyfriend when he's high on meth? It's not really all that different.

Yes-ish? At 24 weeks, survival rates are, with modern medicine, still as low as 40%, although sometimes somewhat higher to be fair. Without modern medicine, it might as well be 0%. I can't confirm it's actually unsurvivable, but it'd be statistically negligible. At 24 weeks, you're just starting to develop the structures that produce surfactant in your lungs. Without that, your lungs collapse and you can't breathe, and you die in short order. We can help this with modern medicine, because we can give you some surfactant, and a bajillion life supporting devices, until you can breathe on your own. Honestly, I would argue that this may not constitute a fully developed human being who can survive outside the uterus, though.

[snip for brevity]

Now, I don't want people to think I'm advocating just tossing out the lot as lost causes, but let's be realistic. We're already consigning people to death who would be much cheaper to treat, and would make, on average, more complete recoveries. Perhaps it's my public health background showing. And I would of course agree that the person in this thread was beyond despicable, for all sorts of reasons, and I also agree that there is an advancing degree of humanity, if you will, whereby a fetus become progressively more of a person, and by 24 weeks it's largely established, and by 28 probably pretty much all there, although I'd have to do more research before saying so definitively. Although I would still caution us all to remember that through our generally admirable instincts to idolise babies, we are condemning many more to suffer and die by prioritising extremely early premies. This is actually been a growing problem with the continued development and advancement of NICU medicine, but is the subject of a different thread.

That would be a fine speech indeed except the article made it very clear that some of these pregnancies were well beyond 24 weeks, one even being at 7.5 months. My eldest surviving sister was born at 7 months back in the 1950's and survived with no impairments, really, all she needed was the warmth of an incubator, she didn't even need supplemental oxygen (lucky for her, as back then they tended to overdose the babies with it and leave them blind).

Yes, the legal document states it was abortion past 24 weeks, but not all of these babies were extreme preemies. At least a few of them were well into viability from the report in the article. Once you get to 7 or 7.5 months you're into the realm where the babies are far enough along that some of them will survive without high tech care.

As a side note, I would actually also disagree that these people deserve the death penalty. But largely because I wouldn't prescribe the death penalty for murder, either, for a variety of reasons that are likewise the subject of a different thread.

I'm with you there. I object to the death penalty on moral grounds, so lock him up for life.

[Eternal_Freedom]

And that's a damn good thing too. I must say I never understood the statute of limitations being only one or two years for infanticide. But then again, I never understood the point of a statute of limitations in the first place.

There are very few people I would happily condemn to death but this guy (Gosnell) is one of them.

IIRC, the concept is that if an offender manages to go x amount of time without reoffending, then justice is not served by punishing him needlessly.

IOW, if an 18 year old who robs a store or shoplifts leads a clean life after the robbery and is found out when he's 55, then justice isn't served by uprooting him from his job/family/whatever and sending him to the state pen.

There are exceptions, and murder is chief among them.
Murder someone at 18, and even if you're 80, you're still held liable for the crime.

Fair enough. I suppose I should have quantified my statement a bit. Statute of limitations? Fine, sensible enough on small crimes. But I would say there should be no statute of limitations where death is involved (basically, anything ending in -cide). Infanticide, definitely should be longer than a couple years at least.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Yes-ish? At 24 weeks, survival rates are, with modern medicine, still as low as 40%, although sometimes somewhat higher to be fair. Without modern medicine, it might as well be 0%. I can't confirm it's actually unsurvivable, but it'd be statistically negligible. At 24 weeks, you're just starting to develop the structures that produce surfactant in your lungs. Without that, your lungs collapse and you can't breathe, and you die in short order. We can help this with modern medicine, because we can give you some surfactant, and a bajillion life supporting devices, until you can breathe on your own. Honestly, I would argue that this may not constitute a fully developed human being who can survive outside the uterus, though.

And this doesn't even begin to start up the arguments about allocation of scarce medical resources—premies in the NICU are pretty much unrivaled in terms of dollars per life saved—especially when you take in to account that even saving them will frequently leave you with a person who will be crippled for life with a host of developmental disorders.

Now, I don't want people to think I'm advocating just tossing out the lot as lost causes, but let's be realistic. We're already consigning people to death who would be much cheaper to treat, and would make, on average, more complete recoveries. Perhaps it's my public health background showing. And I would of course agree that the person in this thread was beyond despicable, for all sorts of reasons, and I also agree that there is an advancing degree of humanity, if you will, whereby a fetus become progressively more of a person, and by 24 weeks it's largely established, and by 28 probably pretty much all there, although I'd have to do more research before saying so definitively. Although I would still caution us all to remember that through our generally admirable instincts to idolise babies, we are condemning many more to suffer and die by prioritising extremely early premies. This is actually been a growing problem with the continued development and advancement of NICU medicine, but is the subject of a different thread.

As a side note, I would actually also disagree that these people deserve the death penalty. But largely because I wouldn't prescribe the death penalty for murder, either, for a variety of reasons that are likewise the subject of a different thread.

Well, I will admit I'm biased on the issue. My girlfriend was adopted through a Catholic agency in the US and could have, without their intervention, easily been aborted, so the subject leaves me a hair queasy to think about back-alley abortion clinics terminating post-6-month fetuses. If we had an appropriate social safety net I'd really like to see the limit pushed back to 18 weeks for legal abortions simply because at least some indicators of higher brain function do start by that point.

[Simon_Jester]

As long as we get the safety net *first* and the abortion ban *second...* which, well, if you live in a United States of America where that's likely to happen, please tell me how to get there, because I think I'd like to emigrate.

[Broomstick]

If we HAD a real safety net in the US then this sort of appalling shit would be less likely to happen. These women aren't going to an abbatoir because they want to, it's because they're desperate. There are so many obstacles to legal abortions that they wind up blowing the time limits. They panic and go to a butcher like this guy who will tell them that no, it's not too late.

[MKSheppard]

link

Pennsylvania Employees Fired in Clinic Inquiry
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania said Tuesday that several state workers had been fired and the state’s abortion clinics would be subjected to stricter oversight as a result of an investigation into a Philadelphia clinic where, according to the district attorney, a woman and seven newborn babies were killed in deplorable conditions.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 69, who ran the clinic, the Women’s Medical Society, was indicted by a grand jury last month on eight counts of murder. The grand jury report found that babies were born alive in the clinic but were killed when their spinal cords cut with scissors by clinic staff members. At least two women died during abortion procedures.

“This doesn’t even rise to the level of government run amok,” Governor Corbett said in a statement. “It was government not running at all. To call this unacceptable doesn’t say enough. It’s despicable.”

Governor Corbett ordered the state’s abortion clinics to be inspected at least once a year and said clinics that fail to meet basic state health standards would be closed, at least temporarily.

Pennsylvania abortion clinics will also have unannounced inspections, including during evenings and weekends. The results will be posted online.

Governor Corbett said 11 state employees had been dismissed or resigned since the conditions at Dr. Gosnell’s clinic became public. The clinic’s practices had been the subject of numerous complaints for at least a decade before it was closed.

[MKSheppard]

Link

Philadelphia (CNN) -- Philadelphia prosecutors say they may seek the death penalty against abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, who is charged with murder after allegedly performing illegal late-term abortions at a dirty facility.

Authorities allege that some of the infants were born viable and alive during the sixth, seventh and eighth months of pregnancy and then were killed with scissors, which were used to cut their spinal cords.

Prosecutors "did preserve the right to seek the death penalty at a later date by giving a notice of aggravating circumstances in court today," said Tasha Jamerson, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, in a statement released Wednesday. The circumstances in this case are the deaths of people under age 12 and multiple murder charges

Gosnell, 70, faces eight counts of murder in the deaths of seven babies and a 41-year-old woman.

Karnamaya Mongar died November 19, 2009, after overdosing on anesthetics prescribed by the doctor, according to Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams.

Gosnell's defense attorney, Jack McMahon, appeared in court Wednesday for the formal arraignments. Gosnell's presence was not required, and he was not in court. McMahon promised to "vigorously defend" Gosnell against the charges.

Last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett fired a half-dozen employees and announced changes in two departments, calling state oversight of an abortion clinic where the deaths occurred "despicable." The Department of Health and the Department of State have primary oversight over such clinics.

"This doesn't even rise to the level of government run amok. It was government not running at all. To call this unacceptable doesn't say enough. It's despicable,'' Corbett said.

Seven employees from the Department of Health, as well as the Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs, a branch of the Department of State -- are no longer employed by the state, having either resigned or been terminated since the situation came to light, Corbett said in statement.

In addition, four other former employees named in the grand jury investigation had previously resigned.

District Attorney Williams earlier called the facility "a house of horrors" that performed "botched and illegal abortions" and was full of containers of fetuses' body parts.

Six other defendants face charges. All had some role at the Women's Medical Society clinic, which was run by Gosnell and served mostly low-income minority women, Williams said.

A grand jury investigation determined that health and licensing officials had received repeated reports about Gosnell's practices for two decades, but had taken no action, even after learning that women died during routine abortions, Williams has said.

Link

3 ex-employees of abortionist may face death
By Joseph A. Slobodzian

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Three former employees of accused West Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell could soon join him facing the possibility of the death penalty.

City prosecutors confirmed Wednesday they were considering capital punishment in the cases of three workers at Gosnell's clinic. The three allegedly assisted the 70-year-old physician in seven abortions in which infants were born live and viable but then killed by Gosnell.

Assistant District Attorneys Joanne Pescatore and Christine Wechsler said they had agreed with defense attorneys for the three - Lynda Williams, 42, of Wilmington; Steven Massof, 48, of Pittsburgh; and Adrienne Moton, 33, of Upper Darby - to extend for 60 days Wednesday's deadline for prosecutors to notify the defense that death by lethal injection is possible.

Pescatore said the delay did not indicate that prosecutors were trying to negotiate guilty plea deal in which the former workers would testify against Gosnell.

Rather, Pescatore said, it was to give both sides more time to investigate the complex case.

"We didn't know enough, and they might want to tell us more things," Pescatore said.

Massof's lawyer, Jeffrey M. Lindy, confirmed the 60-day extension but declined further comment. Lawyers for Moton and Williams could not be reached for comment.

There was no extension for Gosnell. Prosecutors notified defense attorney Jack McMahon that they will seek a death sentence if a jury finds Gosnell guilty of first-degree murder in the seven abortions at his Women's Medical Society clinic at 3801 Lancaster Ave.

The prosecutors' comments followed arraignments for Gosnell, his wife Pearl, 50, and eight clinic workers charged with him in January.

Neither Gosnell nor the other defendants held in prison in lieu of bail were in court for arraignment. Such is often the case at the routine proceeding in which prosecutors turn over discovery - documents and other evidence - to the defense.

Only two Gosnell defendants are free on bail: office workers Tina Baldwin, 49, and Madeline Joe, 53, both of Philadelphia. Both appeared with lawyers, and neither commented as they left the Criminal Justice Center hearing.

The death-penalty notice - known among lawyers as an "802" for the section of the state criminal code where it is found - does not lock the District Attorney's Office into pursuing death for Gosnell.

Prosecutors often make last-minute pretrial offers to withdraw the death penalty if a homicide defendant pleads guilty, waives all appeal rights, and agrees to serve life in prison without parole.

The 802 notice deadline exists so people charged with first-degree murder know they must hire a lawyer certified by the state courts to defend death-penalty cases and have time to gather "mitigating evidence" to try to persuade a trial jury to opt for a life sentence instead of death by lethal injection.

In addition to seven counts of first-degree murder, Gosnell is charged with third-degree murder in the 2009 death of a patient administered too much anesthesia by unqualified clinic staff.

The Gosnells and their eight employees were criminally charged in January after the District Attorney's Office released a 260-page county grand jury report. The report alleged in horrific detail that Gosnell performed illegal late-term abortions for poor women, in some cases killing infants born viable by cutting their spines with scissors.

The 10 defendants' next court date is March 30 before Common Pleas Court Judge Benjamin Lerner. Lerner handles all pretrial motions in homicide cases before the case is assigned to a homicide trial judge.