A Harris County judge on Monday dismissed a charge of theft from a doctor accused of stealing nine doses of the Modern COVID-19 vaccine.
District Court Judge Franklin Bynum criticized Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg for trying to persuade Dr. Hasan Gokal to prosecute and said that the charge of the one-off offense due to theft by a government official is missing a probable cause.
“In the number of words commonly used to describe an allegation of shoplifting, the state is trying for the first time to criminalize a doctor’s documented administration of vaccine doses during an public health emergency,” Bynum said in his order written and added the prosecutor. affidavit was “riddled with sloppiness and mistakes”.
Ogg spokeswoman Dane Schiller said prosecutors would continue the case.
“Judge Bynum’s free remarks question his fairness and impartiality; we expect to present all the evidence in a grand jury, ”Schiller said.
Gokal, who worked for Harris County Public Health, was overseeing a vaccine distribution site on Dec. 29 when an open bottle of Moderna doses was left at the end of the day, around 6:30 p.m. Since the doses would expire within six, Gokal said through his lawyer that he offered the vaccine to the health workers and the police on the premises, but that they had refused or had already been vaccinated.
Gokal said he called a supervisor at the health department, who has no patients available. He then used contacts on his cell phone and administered approximately nine doses to recipients: elderly residents or people with certain medical conditions. Because he could not find another recipient, Gokal said that after 23:00 he gave the final dose to his chronically ill wife
Gokal said he entered all the recipients in the state’s database the next day, as required. He was fired on Jan. 8 when public health leaders in Harris County determined he had violated the policy by taking doses from a vaccination site.
In a news release last week, Ogg accused Gokal of stealing doses to give to his family and friends. Gokal’s lawyer, Paul Doyle, claims that the health department fired the doctor to divert attention from a mismanagement of the vaccine.
The government has an interest in ensuring that physicians follow procedures for distributing vaccines, said Valerie Gutmann Koch of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago. However, these rules must be clear and transparent.
“It’s very difficult not to feel medically with the doctor, and all the different steps he has taken to ensure the vaccine gets into as many arms as possible,” Koch said.
The Department of Health has yet to respond to a Chronicle request for the distribution of vaccines. A spokesman on Monday did not respond to a request for comment on the case’s dismissal.
Doyle said Gokal was preparing to sue Harris County for wrongful termination.
“An apology from Harris County Public Health and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office to Dr. Gokal and his family will not be enough,” Doyle said. “The agency disrespected the name of this good civil servant and took away his job for no reason.”
Gokal, an emergency physician, began working in Harris County last April.