Gertrude I. Bryant was a 63-year-old patient in the cardiac care/intensive care unit at Community Hospital of the Valleys in Perris, California, when her condition suddenly and violently deteriorated in April 1981. Accounts identify the episode as April 7, 1981. Hospital notes show she was hospitalized with high blood pressure and congestive heart failure and was receiving Nipride; she became incoherent during the night and by early morning suffered seizures, respiratory arrest and then cardiac arrest, and was pronounced dead at 7:33 a.m.

Investigators and prosecutors later concluded her symptoms and tissue testing were consistent with a massive overdose of lidocaine. Prosecutors presented expert testimony that lidocaine poisoning caused her death and that registered nurse Robert Rubane Diaz administered a fatal dose. Defense experts and the trial judge disputed certain interpretations but the judge ultimately found Diaz guilty. He was convicted of 12 counts of first-degree murder, including Bryant’s, and a judgment of death was entered on June 15, 1984; the California Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and sentence on August 31, 1992.