Judge dismisses charge against Texas doctor accused of stealing COVID vaccine doses

A Texas judge threw out a charge against the public health doctor accused of stealing doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The judge dismissed the theft charge Monday against Dr. Hasan Gokal, who was fired by Harris County Public Health and arrested after he administered doses from a punctured vial to family and friends. Gokal will now seek a wrongful termination lawsuit, his attorney says.

“As I stated publicly last week, an apology by Harris County Public Health and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office towards Dr. Gokal and his family will not be enough,” attorney Paul Doyle said in a statement to McClatchy News. “The agency disparaged this good public servant’s name and took away his employment without cause. More must be done by those responsible to make this right.”

Gokal was working Dec. 29 at a vaccination site at a park in Humble, northeast of Houston, when he took the vial with 10 doses of the Moderna vaccine, authorities say. Gokal administered nine doses to friends and family, which the public health department determined was a “breach in protocol,” according to a probable cause affidavit.

The public health agency said the doses should have been provided to at-risk front-line workers named on a list by the county, according to the affidavit.

However, Gokal’s attorney said the doctor offered the doses to police and health workers at the vaccination site, and they either declined or already received the shot, the Houston Chronicle reported. The attorney said Gokal then called a supervisor, who didn’t know of any available patients, leading him to inoculate older and at-risk people in his phone contacts, as well as his wife, who is “chronically ill,” the newspaper reported.

“We also sincerely hope this incident doesn’t deter other front-line medical personnel from doing everything they can to make sure vaccines are not wasted,” Doyle said in the statement.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office told KTRK that prosecutors could refer the case to a grand jury, but a decision has not been finalized.

County Court-At-Law Judge Franklin Bynum slammed the district attorney’s office in his order dismissing the charge.

“In the number of words usually taken to describe an allegation of retail shoplifting, the State attempts, for the first time, to criminalize a doctor’s documented administration of vaccine doses during a public health emergency,” Bynum wrote. “The Court emphatically rejects this attempted imposition of the criminal law on the professional decisions of a physician.”