A former Lafayette doctor convicted in 1998 of attempted murder for injecting his former mistress with HIV-tainted blood has died.
Ken Pastorick, spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, confirmed that Richard J. Schmidt, 74, died at a Baton Rouge hospital Feb. 12. Schmidt was still in Department of Corrections custody at the time of his death, serving a 50-year sentence at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, Pastorick said.
Schmidt was found guilty of attempted second-degree murder in 1998, after a jury concluded Schmidt injected his former mistress, Janice Trahan, with HIV-tainted blood, under the guise of giving her a B-12 vitamin injection.
Schmidt, a gastroenterologist, and Trahan, a nurse, had been engaged in a long-term extramarital affair and had a child together. During that time, Schmidt also treated Trahan as a patient, court records document.
In her testimony at trial, Trahan said that the night of Aug. 4, 1994 Schmidt arrived at her home insistent on giving her a B-12 shot. The woman was asleep in bed with their child when he arrived. Schmidt had given Trahan several B-12 shots in the prior month, before she ended their affair. Trahan said she asked to delay the injection, but Schmidt insisted and injected her. He then left her home, a summary of the trial in a Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeal decision said.
Trahan began feeling ill after the shot. After months of doctor’s appointments, she was eventually diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and Hepatitis C.
She initially sought care from Schmidt, who ordered a blood panel conducted. Despite claiming that the panel tested for HIV and Trahan was negative, it was later determined he did not test for HIV. At least one doctor Trahan saw while seeking a diagnosis did not test for HIV because of Schmidt’s claim about the negative test result, the trial summary said.
Trahan filed a criminal complaint against Schmidt, initiating an investigation.
Lafayette Police Department investigators determined that on Aug. 2, 1994 and Aug. 4, 1994, Schmidt drew blood from two patients, one with Hepatitis C and another with AIDS.
According to an office jot book that logged patient blood draws and test samples, the blood samples were not assigned any tests or a corresponding ID number, as other blood tests were. The jot book itself was also found stashed in a box in a storage room behind Schmidt’s private office, per testimony presented at trial.
Prosecutors also presented testimony from experts detailing the relatedness between Trahan’s HIV infection and the HIV infection of the patient Schmidt drew blood from. The relatedness was assessed using phylogenetic analysis, which assess evolutionary relationships and, in the case of HIV study, the degree of difference between HIV DNA.
This was the first criminal case in the United States to introduce phylogenetic analysis as evidence.
Other evidence presented by the prosecution included testimony examining the history of Schmidt and Trahan’s relationship, as well as Trahan’s sexual history, since HIV is commonly transmitted through sexual contact.
Schmidt unsuccessfully challenged his conviction in state and federal court, seeking appeals, relief and other forms of legal intervention in his case. The 74-year-old applied for parole at least once and was denied, in June 2015. Trahan testified against Schmidt’s parole request at the 2015 hearing, according to an Acadiana Advocate report.
In 2020, Schmidt sought a second review of his case in federal court. He argued that the phylogenetic analysis was incorrectly conducted and the application of the analysis method as used at trial has since been discredited, and argued prosecutors’ presentation of the phylogenetic evidence constituted prosecutorial misconduct.
Because the 74-year-old had previously attempted to challenge the phylogenetic evidence, the review was limited to whether prosecutorial misconduct occurred because of its use at trial.
As part of his filing, Schmidt submitted affidavits from Gerald H. Learn, PhD and William Gallaher, Ph.D, experts in microbiology, virology, molecular genetics and evolutionary biology. Gallaher also testified as an expert witness for Schmidt’s defense at his 1998 trial.
Learn and Gallaher stated that scientific advancements have discredited the use of phylogenetic analysis to prove direct relatedness between strains of HlV, and modern tests show that Trahan’s HIV infection and the infection of the originating patient are not related. They said the new test results could exonerate Schmidt.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Carol B. Whitehurst wrote in a review of the petition that in 1998 the phylogenetic evidence was sufficiently evaluated in pre-trial review and deemed admissible, and that prosecutors could not have predicted the scientific advancements cited in Learn and Gallaher’s affidavits. Whitehurst found the prosecutors appropriately relied on the science available at the time and did not commit misconduct.
Judge Robert R Summerhays agreed with Whitehurst’s findings, and denied Schmidt’s petition in June 2022.