The Queensland state attorney general has appealed the
seven-year prison sentence of an American surgeon convicted
of killing three patients, arguing the punishment isn't tough
enough.
Indian-born US citizen Jayant Patel, 60, was convicted last
month of three counts of manslaughter and one of causing
grievous bodily harm while he was a surgeon at a state-run
hospital in Bundaberg, a sugar industry town 370km north of
Brisbane in Queensland.
He had faced a maximum of life in prison for the manslaughter
of Mervyn John Morris, James Edward Phillips and Gerry Kemps,
and the grievous bodily harm of Ian Rodney Vowles. Patel will
be eligible for parole after 3 1/2 years.
Queensland Attorney-general Cameron Dick filed an appeal
against the sentence on Monday.
"The grounds of this appeal are that these sentences are
inadequate in all the circumstances and fail to reflect the
gravity of the offenses," he said in a statement.
Lawyers for Patel filed their own appeal last week against
the conviction and sentence, which came more than 25 years
after concerns were first raised in the US about Patel's
competency as a surgeon. He left Australia in 2005, just as
questions started swirling about his record in Queensland.
He was arrested by the FBI at his home in Portland, Oregon,
in 2008 and extradited to Australia.
Patel was accused during the trial of misdiagnosing patients,
using sloppy and antiquated techniques and being driven by a
"toxic ego" to perform surgeries he'd been banned from
undertaking in the United States.
A government inquiry found that Patel may have contributed
directly to 13 deaths at Bundaberg, though by the time the
case got to trial, prosecutors had boiled it down to three
counts of manslaughter and one of grievous bodily harm.
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