More on Gosnell

 

Gosnell Co-Defendant given House Arrest, Judge cites failing health of elderly mother

 

By Dave Andrusko

Eileen O’Neill outside court during the trial (ALEJANDRO A. ALVAREZ / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

The co-defendant in the trial that culminated in three consecutive life sentences for abortionist Kermit Gosnell threw herself on the mercy of the court and was sentenced not to prison but to house arrest.
Eileen O’Neill was the lone Gosnell employee of nine not to cut a deal with prosecutors. O’Neill “did not perform abortions, but billed for her work with geriatric patients when she did not have a Pennsylvania medical license,” the Associated Press reported. In May, a jury found her guilty of two counts of theft by deception and two counts of conspiracy.

But citing the health condition of O’Neill’s mother, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart sentenced her to 6-23 months of house arrest followed by two years probation.
“You have to serve some form of punishment, but I don’t think it has to be at the expense of your mother,” Minehart said. “In addition to house arrest, Minehart ordered O’Neill to complete 100 hours of community service in any area except medicine where she could present herself as a doctor,” the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Joseph A. Slobodzian reported.

Defense attorney James Berardinelli told Minehart that O’Neill’s conviction meant she would never work again as a doctor. “I don’t know what purpose, seriously, incarceration would have.”
Berardinelli then played his trump card. “With all O’Neill’s siblings living in other states, Berardinelli said, imprisonment would arguably be a death sentence for her mother,” according to Slobodzian. “‘Her mother should not be Kermit Gosnell’s last victim,’ Berardinelli added.” Her mother, seriously ill, is 82.
There were lots of unanswered questions at the end of the day, starting with why O’Neill stayed with Gosnell for nine years and why she never got her license after graduating medical school in the 1990s and passing her medical board tests. Some details from the Associated Press’ MaryClaire Dale may shed some light on the latter.

“O’Neill, a former paralegal, attended medical school in Texas, but was then kicked out of a Louisiana State University residency program after she performed a botched abortion on a mentally disabled teenager, Assistant Philadelphia District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said Monday. The procedure left the girl with a permanent colostomy bag, she said.
“O’Neill performed the abortion while moonlighting at a clinic linked to one in Delaware where Gosnell worked.

“O’Neill finished her family practice residency at Reading Hospital, then made her way to Gosnell’s clinic, the Women’s Medical Society, in West Philadelphia.”
According to news reports, Pescatore said she was “sick and tired” of O’Neill always “playing the victim.”

 

“She knew what she was doing and she knew what was going on in that place,” Pescatore argued. “How could you not know what was going on there? You’d have to be deaf, dumb, blind and stupid!”
Nevertheless, even though Pescatore “argued for confinement within the recommended state guideline range of 6 to 14 months,” Slobodzian wrote, she “did not object to house arrest.”

Although it is all academic—Gosnell is already serving three consecutive life sentences plus 2 ½ to five years—Gosnell is awaiting sentencing on federal drug charges. He pled guilty last week.

Source: NRLC News