The Amputation Nobody Needed

A former surgeon whose licence had been revoked years earlier for gross negligence agreed to amputate the healthy leg of a 79-year-old man who wanted the limb removed. He took the man across the border, did the operation at a clinic abroad, then brought him back to a hotel in this state for after-care. Two days later the man died of gas gangrene, an infection linked to dirty surgery and poor wound care. The accused argues the state cannot try him because the operation happened abroad, and that a botched operation is not murder.