Robert J. Price was a 32-year-old quadriplegic patient at Cooper Green Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama when he died after a sudden medical emergency. Prosecutors alleged nurse Joseph Dewey Akin injected Price with a lethal dose of lidocaine; toxicology reported levels far above any therapeutic range and investigators treated the finding as evidence of deliberate poisoning rather than a medical mistake.

Another nurse, Marion Albright, testified she returned from lunch to see Akin coming out of Price’s room and that he tried to keep her from going back in just before the code blue was called. Prosecutors tied that testimony to a theory that Price’s collapse had been engineered to create a dramatic rescue opportunity, and they introduced evidence about other code blue incidents that day as part of a pattern. Akin was arrested and convicted of murder, but the conviction was later reversed on jury-selection grounds and the case went through retrials, including one that ended in a deadlock; before another trial began Akin pleaded guilty to manslaughter, resulting in a conviction but not for murder.

Did anyone who knew Robert Price or worked at Cooper Green at the time notice unusual activity around code blues or patient emergencies?