Doctor, Nurses Face Murder Accusations

Aug. 23, 2006 — -- At Memorial Medical Center, where 34 people died during Hurricane Katrina, empty wheelchairs still sit in the abandoned parking garage that served as a staging area for evacuations -- haunting reminders of a hellish week that resulted in accusations of murder against a respected doctor and two veteran nurses.

Watch Nightline's full report tonight at 11:35 p.m.

Those accusations, delivered with great fanfare last month by Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti, have roiled the New Orleans medical community.

Colleagues have rushed to the defense of Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry, accused of administering lethal injections to four acutely ill patients in a flooded hospital operating without electricity, running water and functioning toilets.

The three medical professionals were initially handcuffed and hauled away. They have since been released, and are awaiting formal charges pending a likely grand jury investigation.

"We're talking about people that pretended that maybe they were God," Foti said at a news conference announcing the arrests.

Dr. Dan Nuss, a professor at Louisiana State University Medical School, worked with all three of the accused at Memorial, and even shared a practice with Pou.

"To take three people who have dedicated their whole lives to helping other people and to subject them to this kind of microscope, which doesn't take into account the context in which these things transpired, I think is totally wrong," Nuss told "Nightline."

In an interview with ABC News, Foti defended his investigation, which lasted 10 months and filled two rooms with supporting documents.

"The facts are that there was probable cause to believe that this had happened, and we did what we had to do based on what the facts were after a lengthy, time-consuming, gut wrenching look at the facts," he said.

But the facts of what exactly happened at Memorial Medical Center on that Thursday after Katrina hit are now as muddy as the storm waters that overtook New Orleans.

That day, as evacuations were finally under way, doctors and nurses had to decide which patients could survive a tortuous route that led through a hole in a wall to a parking garage, then up to the roof and a helicopter pad.