In the lead-up to his trial, Judge Stefany Miley ordered Dr. Dipak Desai to undergo a mental competency evaluation before standing trial for murder in the death of Rodolfo Meana, 77, who was alleged to have been infected with Hepatitis C while being treated for colon cancer under Desai’s care. Two nurses also were charged in the case.
All three defendants were accused in a 28-count indictment of “introducing the hepatitis C virus” into Meana’s body while he underwent a colonoscopy in 2007 through “contaminated medical instruments, supplies and/or drugs.”
Meana, the Las Vegas Journal Review reported, “died from complications from hepatitis C in his native Philippines. His infection was among seven the Southern Nevada Health District genetically linked to Desai’s main clinic, the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada on Shadow Lane. Health officials definitively linked another two cases to Desai’s facilities and described 106 more cases as ‘possibly linked.’ ”
Desai’s initial criminal case was held up while he underwent a competency evaluation that lasted six weeks while under observation at a secure mental health hospital in Northern Nevada.
According to a report in the Las Vegas Journal Review, “Medical experts there concluded that Desai was exaggerating his physical impairments, and [Judge Miley] ruled that he was competent to stand trial on criminal charges.”
Desai’s lawyer, Richard Wright, entered a not guilty plea on Desai’s behalf, telling Miley that his client does not “legally comprehend” the language of the murder indictment because of the effects of two strokes.
Desai ultimately was tried and a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison and died in 2017 at the age of 67 while serving his sentence. In conjunction with the second-degree murder conviction, Desai was found guilty of reckless disregard, criminal neglect, theft and obtaining money under false pretenses.
Three months after he died, the Nevada State Supreme Court overturned the second-degree murder conviction, finding that Meana did not die as an immediate and direct consequence of Desai’s actions, that Meana’s failure to continue to pursue treatment “broke direct causal connection” between the infection and subsequent death, and that because the nurse anesthetists administered the injections, Desai could not be convicted of murder.