Advertisement

Ericka Jackson, Keisa Cooper and Tahirah Hasseena Shakur, all of Detroit, were charged in 41-A District Court in Sterling Heights with misdemeanor patient abuse after an Oct. 13, 2004 incident at Cherrywood Nursing and Living Center on 15 Mile Road. If convicted of the mistreatment charge, the women would lose their certified nurses aides’ license, in addition to paying a fine of $1,000 to $10,000.

Defense attorneys for the three women filed a motion in Macomb County Circuit Court on Nov. 20 to appeal a ruling by Judge Kimberley Wiegand to uphold the misdemeanor charges.

Ari Faneuil, spokesman for the Michigan Attorney General’s office, said that his office will vehemently fight any dismissal of charges against the three women.

“Although the women are denying it was patient abuse because she was deceased, we believe she was still a patient,” Faneuil said. “We are going to fight this.”

According to court documents, defense attorney Derek Wilczynski, who represents Jackson, said that the woman was not a patient because she had died, and therefore, she could not be mistreated.

“We are firmly standing behind the fact that she was still a patient at the time,” Fanueil said.

In a legal brief filed by Assistant Attorney General Ricahrd Adams, he described the action of the three defendants.

“Ericka Jackson held the body’s hands up in the air, patted the hands and said Œwake up.’ She also posed the arms behind the head. Keisa Cooper pushed the deceased’s legs back so the knees were fully bent, pointing up. Tahirah Shakur took cell phone pictures of the deceased while defendants Cooper and Jackson were on the bed with the body, acting as if they were embracing the deceased. The deceased woman was wearing a nightgown and her bed lines were pushed to the side,” Adams said.

Latasha Humphrey, the witness who reported the three defendants to the authorities, said, according to an investigation report by Special Agent Rebecca Terber, of the health care fraud division of the attorney general’s office, the three women laughed when she and fellow co-worker Tiffany Troxel asked what they were doing.

In the same report, Troxel said that she had heard about similar behavior by the women in the past, but had never witnessed it.

The women were fired from Cherrywood, but have retained their licenses, after an investigation by the state licensing division.

No further court date have been scheduled at the circuit court level, and the Nov. 27 District Court hearing was postponed.