Victims’ families, attorneys react to arrest of Asante nurse in alleged drug-diversion case

Published 2:15 am Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Nearly 11 months since she left her job as a registered nurse at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center, 36-year-old Dani Marie Schofield appeared on a small flatscreen monitor inside Judge Laura Cromwell’s courtroom in Jackson County Circuit Court on Friday.

Facing 44 charges of second-degree assault — all connected to patients who allegedly came under Schofield’s care and spanning July 25, 2022, to July 25, 2023 — she offered a tearful “not guilty” plea.

For victims, their families and community members who have waited for an arrest in the high-profile drug-diversion investigation, first announced in January, it was their first look at Schofield.

Appearing in an orange jail jumpsuit with disheveled, blue-streaked brown hair, Schofield wiped tears from her eyes as Cromwell set bail at $4 million and told her that each of the 44 charges — class B felonies — could come with “maximum penalties of up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on each.”

The Jackson County District Attorney’s Office, which received the case in late April, announced the charges Thursday after presenting the case before a grand jury a day earlier.

Schofield’s arrest on Thursday was the first major development in a seven-month investigation that began in December 2023 when Asante officials reached out to the Medford Police Department after conducting its own internal investigation into a spike in central line infections at the Medford hospital. Medford police handed the results of its investigation over to the DA’s office in late April.

While community members and victims’ family members voiced frustration that the charges did not include murder, or even manslaughter, Chief Deputy DA Patrick Green, the lead prosecutor, said the charges listed in the indictment “represent the charges that the evidence can support in a criminal proceeding.” Green said he was unable to elaborate further on details of the case.

The DA’s office and Medford police, during a joint press conference that followed Schofield’s arrest Thursday, said 16 of the 44 named victims were now deceased. Schofield’s alleged conduct, however, while causing serious infection in patients at the Medford hospital, could not be determined by medical experts as directly linked to those patients’ deaths.

Officials declined to speculate on whether Schofield had stolen the fentanyl for personal use or to sell, and whether an addiction issue had led to her alleged decision to steal the drugs.

Attorney Justin Idiart said he was surprised by the charges in the indictment. His firm, Idiart Law Group of Central Point, is working on cases that predate the indictment’s one-year timeframe and include victims not named among the 44 identified in the indictment.

In February, Idiart filed the first lawsuit related to the alleged drug diversion. The wrongful death suit, filed in Jackson County Circuit Court in February, made Schofield’s name public and seeks more than $11.5 million for the estate of 65-year-old Horace “Buddy” Wilson. Wilson died Feb. 25, 2022, five months before the oldest charge listed in last week’s indictment, after Schofield, the suit alleges, repeatedly swapped prescribed fentanyl with non-sterile tap water administered through Wilson’s bloodstream via his central line.

In a response filed in Jackson County Circuit Court on June 6, Schofield acknowledged she “may have provided care” for Wilson but denied wrongdoing.

Idiart said the details of Wilson’s case, and other cases he intends to try, “match the same fact pattern” as those named in last week’s indictment, with Schofield “administering fentanyl, tracking the bacteria that comes from tap water and the victim dying.”

“My guess is that (the DA’s office) only filed the ones they could prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” Idiart told the Times on Thursday.

“They also didn’t pursue any charges for manslaughter or murder. They’re all assault. I read the press release (from Medford police) and they said, according to their medical experts, they couldn’t prove that it was the cause of their death. … We have our medical experts saying it was the cause of their death, but we do have a lower burden of proof in the civil world than they do in the criminal.”

He added that he knows that many people are disappointed Schofield wasn’t charged with something stronger than assault, and that more victims weren’t included.

Attorney Shayla Steyart, of Shlesinger & deVilleneuve, attended Friday’s arraignment. She called the list of 44 victims, limited to a 12-month timeframe, “interesting.”

“I question if more cases were presented to the grand jury, and maybe only 44 were strong enough,” Steyart said.

“I still think that there likely were a lot more people affected by her.”

David deVilleneuve, also of Schlesinger and deVilleneuve, said last week that his firm would likely file “just under 30” lawsuits — culled from an initial list of 80 they examined — against Asante.

Diane Rogers, a Klamath Falls resident whose husband, Barry Samsten, was listed as a victim in the indictment, said she has nightmares about the level of pain she imagines her husband experienced when his medication was allegedly stolen, and infection raged through his body.

Samsten, a 74-year-old retired transportation planner for the Southern California Association of Governments, was being treated for a bedsore before his death July 26 at the Medford hospital. Samsten’s case was one of several highlighted by the Times after police first announced their investigation.

Rogers was contacted by hospital officials in November, informing her that her husband’s death, of multiple organ failure and septic shock, may have been caused by a hospital nurse replacing Samsten’s prescription fentanyl with non-sterile tap water. Rogers expressed relief Friday that Schofield had been arrested.

“All this time it’s just been going through my mind: ‘How can she still be free?’ I’m in a better place in my mind, now that she’s at least behind bars. I just hope she doesn’t get out while she waits for trial. She shouldn’t be free,” Rogers said Friday.

“I just think about all those victims — and who knows how many there really were? — that trusted her they would get better … and then she sat there and switched their pain medicine out, knowing what she was doing,” Rogers asserted. “I have nightmares. I see Barry’s face, every day of my life, with his eyes looking at me like he was in so much pain.”

Shawn Porter, of Phoenix, Arizona, whose mother, 71-year-old Roberta Porter was also named as a victim in the indictment, said he expected manslaughter or murder charges to be filed in the case, but was grateful for “at least some forward motion.”

He learned the cause of his mother’s death in December 2023 exactly one year after she died, and checked the Jackson County Jail inmate list daily since learning of Schofield’s identity in February.

“I took no pleasure in seeing Dani Schofield crying in court, but there was a level of appeasement to seeing her finally wearing prison orange,” Porter said.

He noted that Schofield, when asked if she could “speak freely” to the judge on Friday, complained about her “very important medications” being withheld.

“I found great irony to her complaining about not receiving her medication, since she was sitting in that little room because she denied at least 44 individuals theirs.”