A physician was convicted of nine counts of second-degree murder Monday in the deaths of eight infants and a fetus between 1982 and 1986 during high- risk deliveries outside hospitals.
Dr. Milos Klvana, 49, of Newhall, near Los Angeles, also was found guilty of five counts of practicing medicine without a license, 28 counts of insurance fraud, two counts of perjury and a count of conspriracy.
Klvana, a Czech immigrant, faces life in prison when he is sentenced next month.
”We all felt that he knew full well he was risking lives with the kind of practice he persisted in-the evidence was pretty clear about that,” said juror Sam Orr, 50. ”We just had no choice.”
During a six-month trial, Deputy District Atty. Brian Kelberg argued that Klvana knew he was incompetent to handle high-risk deliveries outside a hospital setting, and without the proper equipment, but did so anyway, and with a cavalier attitude toward the safety of his patients.
In one incident, Klvana told a woman whose baby died upon delivery to bury the body herself without an autopsy and use the money saved for a trip to Hawaii, Kelberg said.
In another incident, involving the death of a fetus, Klvana told a mother who called to report her baby was no longer moving in her uterus to come to his office for a test the next day.
When Klvana could not locate a fetal heartbeat, he told the woman to return the following day. When she returned, she had gone into labor and the baby was stillborn. Klvana then put the infant`s body in a plastic bag and disposed of it in a trash can without filing a birth or death certificate, Kelberg said.
The prosecution claimed that Klvana employed a soothing bedside manner to gain his patients` trust, but then abandoned them to the risks of serious injury, disease or death.
Kelberg said Klvana began performing in-home and office deliveries of infants after his ”lethal” care of patients in hospitals resulted in the loss of his practicing privileges at those facilities.
”I think that Dr. Klvana is not just incompetent but one . . . who knows he is endangering the lives of his patients,” Kelberg said after the verdicts were read.
Defense lawyer Richard Leonard said Klvana did not know he lacked the ability to perform high-risk deliveries.
”If you talk to all the mothers, he is a very nice man, a very caring man, but he lacks something,” Leonard said.
Both Kelberg and Leonard blasted the state Board of Medical Quality Assurance`s failure to timely revoke or suspend Klvana`s license to practice.
