Ex-nurse pleads not guilty to 6 murder charges

Majors arrives at the Vermillion County courthouse in shackles

December 30, 1997
Web posted at: 11:53 a.m. EST (1653 GMT)

NEWPORT, Indiana (CNN) -- Orville Lynn Majors, the former nurse accused of killing six of his patients, entered a plea of not guilty at an arraignment hearing Tuesday.

Prosecutors said they believe that Majors killed the patients by injecting them with potassium chloride between 1993 and 1995.

Marshall Pinkus, Majors' attorney, said the evidence presented by Vermillion County authorities was old and that epidemiological studies the prosecution intended to present were flawed.

Majors asked for a jury trial and a pre-trial conference was set for January 21. The judge denied bail.

Majors faces a prison term of 65 years on each count if convicted. Prosecutors said they would not seek the death penalty.

Members of the families of several people who died at Vermillion County Hospital shouted and jeered as Majors was led into the Vermillion County courthouse in leg chains and handcuffs.

Majors' attorney Marshall Pinkus

"You need to own up to what you did," one man said.

Robert Doran, whose 76-year-old father died in Vermillion County hospital, said he saw Majors give his father an injection shortly before he died.

Majors is not charged with the elder Doran's death, but his son is party to a class action civil lawsuit against Majors and the hospital over the deaths of 130 people.

Majors, 36, was a licensed practical nurse at the former Vermillion County Hospital in Clinton, Indiana, a 56-bed facility now called West Central Community Hospital.

Majors was on duty during 130 deaths at the hospital. In July, he was publicly named as a suspect in an unspecified number of them.

Majors' license as a practical nurse was revoked by the state in 1995 amid suspicions that he was present in the critical care ward of the hospital when dozens of mostly elderly patients died.

The state Nursing Board said he failed to apprise doctors of patient conditions and exceeded his authority in one case by increasing a patient's oxygen supply.

Related story:

• Former nurse arrested in deaths at Indiana hospital - December 29, 1997

Related site:

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• National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Inc. - information on public policy regarding nursing, computerized clinical simulation testing, nurse aides, and nursing regulation.

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