How the court motivated the suspended sentence of the doctor Dorel Săndesc, after a fatal road accident. “Its purpose is to save lives”

“An entirely isolated event in the defendant's life”, this is how the judge considered, according to the reasoning of the decision, the accident caused by the doctor Dorel Săndesc at the beginning of April 2018, as a result of which a business woman from Timișoara died 9 months after the incident.

The victim of the accident caused by doctor Dorel Săndesc in 2018 was hospitalized for 9 months in an ATI clinic run by him. In front of the judges, the doctor declared that he “involved himself in ensuring the best conditions of care and treatment”, also contacting international experts.

At the trial, his lawyers requested expertise on the grounds that the nosocomial infections that the victim contacted in the ATI ward would have caused the victim's death. Septic shock was also noted by medical examiners in the death certificate.

The punishment is aimed at the minimum prescribed by law

On Friday, the Timișoara Court decided to sentence the Săndesc doctor to 1 year and 8 months in prison with suspension for manslaughter. The decision is not final and can be appealed to the Court of Appeal.

Doctor Dorel Săndesc was sentenced to a punishment aimed at the minimum prescribed by law, although he did not use the simplified procedure, which would have reduced his punishment limits by a third. The court considered mitigating circumstances, citing “the efforts made by the defendant to remove and lessen the consequences of the crime.”

Săndesc contested the evidence of the prosecutors, considering that he is not the only one guilty of the production. He blamed the victim in the back seat of the car he hit, saying she wasn't wearing a seat belt, and her husband for driving 60 km/h.

In an attempt to get rid of him from the charge of manslaughter, his lawyers supported the clarification of the causes of death, citing that the victim died due to septic shock, as a result of the infections contacted in the hospital.

“He deeply regrets committing the crime”

Although he admitted that “he had a partially cooperative attitude with the judicial bodies, he admitted the commission of the deed in a nuanced way”, the judge appreciated the efforts that the doctor Dorel Săndesc made to treat the victim, stressing in his reasoning that “he will have to continue to live with the consequences of his negligence”.

“It is easy to conclude that the defendant is an educated person, integrated in society, appreciated in the community and at work, and the commission of the act provided for by the criminal law for which he is being tried in the pending case appears to be a completely isolated event in the defendant's life. Moreover, in the defendant's statements, he emphasized that his purpose is to save lives and that he deeply regrets committing the crime”, noted the judge in motivation.

When determining the punishment, the court also took into account the long period of time that had passed from the date of the accident until the sentencing.

Nine months in the ATI salon

In 2018, after the accident caused by Dorel Săndesc, accusations appeared in the local press in Timișoara that the patient injured by the doctor was receiving preferential treatment. The aspects related to the patient's hospitalization have never been clarified publicly. The hospital, currently managed by Dorel Săndesc himself, became a civil party in the manslaughter case requesting the obligation of the insurance company to pay the hospitalization expenses.

The court admitted the request and ordered Omniasig, the company with which Săndesc had a police contract at the time, to pay the Timișoara County Hospital 825,650.04 lei, representing the value of the medical services provided to the victim during the nine months of hospitalization.

According to the data in the file, the victim was hospitalized at ATI from the day of the accident – April 9, 2018, until her death – January 31, 2019. The medical documents show that the woman died due to a “serious cranio-cerebral trauma resulting in subdural hematoma and final septic shock with multiple organ failure”.

Doctor Săndesc's explanations: the victim was vulnerable to infections because she was undergoing a weight loss treatment

In the statement given before the prosecutors and judges, Dorel Săndesc spoke about how he took care of the woman injured in the accident.

“The defendant specifies that throughout this period he was involved in ensuring the best conditions of care and treatment, personally contacting numerous national and international experts, including in terms of sending her to a recovery clinic in (…) and (…). Despite the very serious condition since admission, with a deep coma, the evolution was favorable, the coma became more and more superficial, the patient resumed her spontaneous breathing and did not present motor deficits, moving “Also, in evolution, the patient became more and more present, communicating with family members and medical staff, executing motor commands and having emotional reactions,” the judge noted in the judgment handed down on Friday.

Following consultations with experts in medical recovery from the country and abroad, the estimates indicated real chances of recovery and survival, Dorel Săndesc told the judges. Moreover, formalities were initiated for the transfer of the patient to a recovery center abroad, but this did not happen again due to the worsening of the health condition, due to the bacteria contacted in the hospital.

Dorel Săndesc blamed the unfavorable development of the case on the victim. He claimed that she had been on an aggressive, medically uncoordinated weight loss diet for several months and this caused “a serious impairment of immunity and hypoproteinemia, prominent disorders since admission and which caused an increased sensitivity to infections, septicemia, which led to damage to several organs and death”.

Despite the tragic outcome, the doctor stated that he maintained close relations with the victim's family, who call him “even now to consult him on various professional and medical issues”.

Regarding the accident, Dorel Săndesc admitted that “he should have insured himself much better”.

The decision handed down on Friday by the Timișoara Court can be appealed within 10 days.

The accident for which Dorel Săndesc is accused took place on April 9, 2018 in an intersection in the town of Giroc near Timișoara. The doctor was at the wheel of a Jaguar car and did not respect the give way sign, entering a Dacia Logan car in which there was a family from Giroc. On impact, the Logan was launched into a bridgehead.

Dorel Săndesc is one of the most qualified ATI doctors in Romania. He is a university professor and vice-chancellor of the “Victor Babeș” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Timisoara, head of the ATI Discipline, manager of the Timisoara County Clinical Hospital, president of the ATI Expert Advisory Commission of the Ministry of Health and vice-president of the Romanian Society of Anesthesia and Intensive Care.