A judge sentenced a former respiratory therapist in Missouri to 18 years Friday after pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter charges in the deaths of two patients in 2002.
Jennifer Hall, 42, was sentenced to 18 years in the Missouri Department of Corrections with the possibility of parole after pleading guilty in April for her connection to the deaths of 75-year-old Fern Franco and 37-year-old David Wesley Harper, KCTV 5 News reported. Hall was initially arrested and charged with first-degree murder in 2022 but pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree involuntary manslaughter and one count of second-degree assault twenty years after the deaths of her two patients.
A former respiratory therapist who pleaded guilty in the deaths of two patients at a Missouri hospital two decades ago has received her prison sentence. https://t.co/L6uZX45QoM
— KCTV5 News (@KCTV5) August 19, 2023
Franco and Harper were just two of the nine patients who died at the Chillicothe’s Hedrick Medical Center over several months in 2002 under “medically suspicious” circumstances. From the time Hall began working at the hospital in Dec. 2001 until she was placed on administrative leave in May 2002, there were reportedly 18 cardiac arrests, or “Code Blue” events. Previously, the hospital had only averaged a total of one “Code Blue” event per year. (RELATED: UK Jury Finds Nurse Guilty Of Killing 7 Babies, Trying To Kill 6 Others)
“She liked Code Blues,” one nurse testified of Hall, the Kansas City Star reported.
Hall was ultimately fired from the hospital, not because of her proximity to patients during the uptick of Code Blue events, but after administrators learned that she had been found guilty of starting a fire at a hospital where she had worked previously. Hall was later acquitted of the crime at a retrial in 2005 after spending a year in jail, the New York Post reported.
After an analysis of Franco’s tissue samples revealed morphine and a powerful muscle relaxant used in anesthesia in her system, an investigation into her death was opened as neither drug had been prescribed to her by doctors, KVTV 5 News reported.
“A sentence 20 years in the making. I am happy that justice is finally served for Jennifer Hall. Families of loved ones, Doctors, and Nurses have been waiting for this day. It wouldn’t have happened without the efforts of the Chillicothe Police Department who gave this complicated cold case enough time and energy to get this conviction, “Livingston County Prosecuting Attorney Adam Warren said in a statement, according to KCTV 5 News.
Though she pleaded guilty to the lesser charges, Hall received the maximum prison sentence for the charges. “She almost escaped justice completely, so I’m very satisfied. I think the court listened to the arguments of the state, and at least mostly, justice was served,” Warren continued, according to Fox 4 KC.
Warren noted that though Hall will eventually be eligible for parole, “we all sleep better knowing she is behind bars,” KCTV 5 reported.