PATEL: SECRET HEARING FOR PATHOLOGIST ACCUSED OF G20 BLUNDERS
A misconduct hearing into the Home Office pathologist accused of botching the first post mortem on Ian Tomlinson is to be held in private, the General Medical Council ruled today (mon).
Mohamed ‘Freddy’ Patel, 64, is accused of making blunders while examining Mr Tomlinson’s body after the newspaper seller died during the G20 protests in London in April 2009.
But panel chairman Robert Lloyd-Richards said press and public would be excluded from the hearing ‘so as not to prejudice any future proceedings and to allow the GMC to undertake its regulatory function without uncontrolled disclosure’.
Patel had carried out one of three autopsies on Mr Tomlinson, 47, and found he died of natural causes linked to coronary artery disease.
Two other pathologists later separately ruled that Mr Tomlinson – who had been pushed by a police officer – died of internal bleeding as a result of blunt force trauma, in combination with cirrhosis of the liver.
The failure of the three pathologists to all agree on the cause of Mr Tomlinson’s death initially led to the Director of Public Prosecutions dropping the charges.
Metropolitan police officer PC Simon Harwood, 43, is now awaiting trial for manslaughter after the case was reviewed following an inquest jury ruling that Mr Tomlinson was unlawfully killed.
A previous GMC hearing in August had ruled that Patel should remain suspended while Mr Tomlinson’s death was probed.
The pathologist is currently banned from working the UK after being found guilty of a string of bungled post mortems.
They include an ‘irresponsible’ autopsy on the first victim of the Camden Ripper, which is said to have hampered a police investigation by ruling out murder.
Patel found that prostitute Sally White had died from a heart attack during consensual sex after her naked body was discovered in locked room at ‘Camden Ripper’ Anthony Hardy’s home.
His report to police ruling out murder meant there was effectively ‘no crime to investigate’, the panel heard.
Within months, Hardy, 59, went on to kill Elizabeth Valad, 29, and Brigette MacClennan, 34, whose bodies he chopped up and dumped in bin bags.
He later confessed to the crimes and was was jailed for life in 2003 for the murder of all three women.
Patel was also found guilty of misconduct over three other autopsies at a previous misconduct hearing, including that of five-year-old Annastacia Williams in September 2002.
His ‘cursory’ examination on her battered body missed ‘significant marks of violence’, including broken bones finger-nail gouges and even a bite mark.
Annastacia’s stepmother Christine Green was jailed for four years at the Old Bailey in 2003 after being convicted of child cruelty. Her father Ken Williams was also jailed for two years for cruelty.
Patel was also guilty of misconduct over a three-week-old baby who had alleged died from cot death in August 2003 and after changing the cause of death after an autopsy of an elderly woman, who was found dead at the foot of her stairs, ‘to satisfy the family’.
The current hearing at the GMC is unusual in that no details of the allegations against the doctor were released on its website ahead of the tribunal, and the charges were also kept secret by the panel.
Instead of a full determination outlining the reasons for holding a hearing in private, a single sentence from Lloyd-Richards’ determination was given out to reporters.
It said: ‘In the interests of the public, and so as not to prejudice any future proceedings and to allow the GMC to undertake its regulatory function without uncontrolled disclosure, this hearing will be conducted in private session throughout – the public and the press are excluded.’
Redacted transcripts of the hearing’s decisions will be released in due course.
A decision on whether Patel’s current suspension order should be renewed will be made after the panel’s decision on the facts in the current case.
The hearing continues.
