CrimLaw

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From How Appealing


A jury in New York "found Mr. Nelson guilty on Wednesday of violating Mr. Rosenbaum's civil rights by stabbing him during the 1991 racial disturbance in Brooklyn, but not guilty of causing the death itself."

This is one of those very few times that publicity hurt the prosecutor rather than the defendant. And it actually worked a good. The publicity counteracted an incredibly bad decision by the judge that despite the fact that it appears as though the victim would not have died if the hospital did its job correctly ("Mr. Rosenbaum was alert for some time after the stabbing, but at Kings County Hospital Center, the State Health Department determined, doctors failed to notice a four-inch-deep stab wound for nearly an hour, and he bled to death internally") no mention of the malpractice could come in "because Mr. Rosenbaum would not have died had he not been stabbed in the first place, the hospital's conduct was beside the point."

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