COVID-19 indictment against vaccine theft dismissed by Texas doctor

HOUSTON A judge on Monday denied a charge of theft against a doctor in the Houston department, who was accused by prosecutors, of stealing nine doses of coronavirus vaccine from a damaged vial and administering it to family and friends. has.

Authorities allege that Hasan Gokal, who worked for Harris County Public Health, stole a vial of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine on December 29 while working at a vaccination site in a suburban park in Houston on December 29. .

But Judge Franklin Bynum, a Harris District Judge, found that there was no probable cause to charge Gokal with theft. The judge criticized prosecutors for accusing Gokal, saying their complaint about possible causes was “riddled with sloppiness and mistakes.”

“In the number of words commonly used to describe an accusation of shoplifting, the state is trying for the first time to criminalize a doctor’s documented administration of vaccine doses during a public health emergency,” Bynum said in his order of two pages written around the the charge. “The court rejects this attempt to impose the criminal law on professional decisions of a doctor, with emphasis.

Dane Schiller, a spokeswoman for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, said Bynum’s ruling raises questions about its fairness and impartiality.

“We expect to present all the evidence in the case to a grand jury and proceed from there,” Schiller said.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office has no immediate comment on the theft dismissal, but indicated it could issue a statement later Monday.

Gokal’s lawyers said the doctor did nothing wrong and only tried to ensure the vaccine from a punctured vial was not wasted.

Paul Doyle, a Gokal lawyer, said his client was planning to file a wrongful termination lawsuit. Gokal was fired after an internal investigation by the health department.

‘The agency despised the name of this good civil servant and took away his job for no reason. “Responsible people need to do more to rectify this,” Doyle said in a statement. “We also sincerely hope that this incident does not deter other medical personnel in the front line from doing everything in their power to ensure that vaccines are not wasted.”

Prosecutors allege that Gokal, 48, after a day of vaccination on Dec. 29 in a Houston suburban park, took the vial abroad and vaccinated nine individuals, including his wife. They claim that the health department’s rules that return doses of damaged vials to the head office are being ignored so that they can be administered to prominent workers, including health care workers and police officers, and to vulnerable populations.

But Doyle said Gokal, after the bottle was stabbed, had only six hours on December 29 to administer the doses before it expired, and after he could not find any front-line workers to give the vaccine, he given it to individuals who qualified to receive it. Gokal did not hide what he was doing, but told his vaccination team, Doyle said.

Gokal is facing a charge of theft by a government official. If convicted, he could face up to a year in prison and a $ 4,000 fine.

In Wisconsin, a pharmacist was arrested in December after he was accused of destroying 57 scales with the Moderna vaccine for allegedly believing the vaccine would alter the recipients’ DNA.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70