Ex-nurse goes on trial in elderly patients' deaths

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Ex-nurse goes on trial in elderly patients' deaths

Posted 9-20-99
By Diane Sussman

Brazil, Ind. Although he has steadfastly maintained his innocence, a former nurse is being tried on seven counts of murder in the deaths of elderly patients at the former Vermillion County Hospital in Clinton.

The long-awaited trial of 38-year-old Orville Lynn Majors Jr., LPN, opened Sept. 7 in Clay County Circuit Court with prosecutor Nina Alexander accusing Majors of "exercising life and death power that belongs in the hands of God." Majors maintains all of the patients died of natural causes.

Alexander told the jury medical experts would testify that the death of each patient was consistent with lethal injections of potassium chloride. Police found syringes and vials of epinephrine and potassium chloride when they searched Majors' home and his parents' van.

But defense attorney I. Marshall Pinkus told the jury that the patients were in fragile health and that physicians for the seven patients will testify in Majors' defense. "They know these people better than any of the other experts and doctors you will hear from in this case," Pinkus said.

One of the patients had heart disease, prostate cancer, and pneumonia when he was admitted, and his condition was so dire an emergency room nurse provided grief counseling to the family, Pinkus said. The man died the next day.

One of the patients, Dorthea Hixon, 80, had been a nurse at Vermillion, now West Central Community Hospital.

The highly publicized case began when nursing supervisor Dawn Stirek grew alarmed at the rise in deaths in Vermillion's intensive care unit. Stirek began checking time cards and found that Majors was on duty for 130 of the 147 deaths in the ICU from May 1993 to March 1995. In previous years, no more than 31 ICU patients had died.

After three years of investigation, Indiana state police arrested Majors in December 1997. Vermillion discharged Majors in 1995, the same year the state nursing board suspended his license for providing medical care-including injections-that exceeded his authority.