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Story Published: Jul 8, 2008 at 7:10 PM PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) - No criminal charges will be filed against medical staff at a troubled inner-city hospital over the death of a homeless woman who writhed in pain on the emergency room floor for nearly an hour, a county prosecutor concluded Tuesday. A nurse at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital was not criminally negligent despite refusing to examine Edith Rodriguez - who was kneeling and screaming in pain with a perforated bowel - and telling her to get off the floor, according to the report by Deputy District Attorney Susan Schwartz. "Prompt intervention would not have saved her life," Schwartz wrote in the report to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department about the May 2007 death. "It cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt" that the nurse's actions were a substantial... [read full story]
