A bunch of intercourse crime survivors says Queens District Lawyer Melinda Katz went too straightforward on a serial rapist physician who has pleaded responsible to recording video as he sexually abused or assaulted a number of unconscious girls.
Final month, Dr. Zhi Alan Cheng, 35, pleaded responsible to 4 counts of rape and three counts of sexual abuse, a small fraction of the greater than 50 intercourse crime fees he confronted in a sequence of indictments that might have landed him in jail for all times, had he been convicted at trial.
In change for the responsible pleas, the DA’s workplace is agreeing to hunt a jail sentence of 24 years, which means Cheng may very well be launched from jail earlier than he turns 60.
“He is getting off light. He can kind of rebuild his life because he’s fairly young,” mentioned one in every of Cheng’s survivors, who requested for her identification to be withheld. “You have this obligation to victims of crime and you’re just letting people off lightly like this. Why?”
Nicholas Liakas, an legal professional who represents 4 girls who’re all prepared to testify that Cheng drugged and sexually violated them, mentioned his shoppers are collectively asking the decide to reject the Queens plea deal.
“I don’t think the public has been fully served by this, for lack of a better term, sweetheart deal,” Liakas mentioned. “You have someone who is a predator filming themselves committing heinous acts on the public. If that is a case you’re concerned about losing, then I don’t know what kind of case you’d be willing to try!”
Katz declined the I-Staff’s request for an interview and didn’t reply particular questions in regards to the settlement to drop dozens of felony fees, together with 9 counts of predatory intercourse assault, every of which carries a most sentence of life in jail. Her workplace did present a written assertion defending the plea deal and insisting each sufferer within the indictment was initially content material with the plea when contacted by prosecutors.
“Zhi Cheng is a predator with a medical degree who was responsible for some of the most egregious conduct we have ever seen committed by someone who took the Hippocratic oath,” wrote Brendan Brosh, a Queens DA spokesperson. “Our investigators and prosecutors spent hundreds of hours painstakingly reviewing thousands of files to build a strong case against this defendant which resulted in a plea that includes a substantial prison sentence.”
In his responsible plea, Cheng waived his proper to attraction and admitted he video-recorded himself raping or sexually abusing seven girls, together with hospital sufferers at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Queens.
He additionally entered what’s known as an “Alford plea,” to 1 rely of sexual abuse associated to a different hospital affected person. An Alford plea is an admission that he would seemingly be discovered responsible at trial, regardless that the defendant maintains his innocence.
However these eight survivors weren’t the one girls Cheng was accused of sexually violating.
When the fees had been first introduced two years in the past, DA Katz mentioned her workplace was additionally in possession of different movies extracted from Cheng’s digital units, which seem to indicate the physician sexually assaulting a number of girls who had not but been recognized. On the time, Katz requested for ideas from the general public, noting metadata on the movies steered these unknown girls had been assaulted or abused in areas together with Manhattan, Westchester County, Las Vegas, in and round San Francisco, and in Thailand.
The Queens plea settlement, as mentioned in court docket, comprises no requirement that Cheng inform what he is aware of about these movies. The District Lawyer additionally declined to reply questions on these movies.
“There are a lot more women, and I think he deserves more years,” mentioned one in every of Cheng’s victims who was sexually abused on video whereas unconscious in a hospital examination room.
In describing the plea settlement to Choose Ushir Pandit-Durant in June, Assistant DA Brianne Richards didn’t deal with the extra movies discovered on Cheng’s units.
Jeffrey Einhorn, Cheng’s protection legal professional, mentioned he couldn’t deal with questions on different alleged intercourse crimes captured on his shopper’s digital units.
“With regard to any uncharged crimes, we can’t comment on them,” Einhorn mentioned.
Additionally lacking from Cheng’s responsible plea in court docket was any point out of how his victims grew to become so sedated that he was in a position to sexually violate them. In line with the indictment, Cheng typically used hospital-grade sedatives, together with propofol and sevoflourane, to render his victims unconscious. However the plea settlement didn’t seem to drive the physician to say the place or how he obtained the medicine.
Liakas believes that omission tends to serve New-York Presbyterian Hospital Queens, the goal of a civil lawsuit he filed, alleging Cheng’s sample of intercourse crimes was enabled by lax oversight on the hospital.
“I’m having trouble understanding why this deal was made,” Liakas mentioned. “You have a hammer over this person’s head, all of the evidence you could imagine in a criminal case, and you have it hovering over him, and they really didn’t get much in return.”
NewYork-Presbyterian has lengthy mentioned the hospital fired Dr. Cheng as quickly as employees discovered of the felony investigation. When requested if any hospital consultant mentioned the plea cope with prosecutors, a spokesperson despatched the I-Staff the next assertion:
“While we have cooperated fully with the investigation from the beginning, we were not involved in any aspect of the plea negotiations. The District Attorney’s office expertly led the effort to bring him to justice.”
Likewise, the Queens DA insisted that prosecutors by no means mentioned the parameters of any potential plea cope with representatives of NewYork-Presbyterian upfront of Dr. Cheng pleading responsible in court docket.
