A former obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was convicted in 2022 of sexually abusing patients must be given a new trial, a state appeals court said on Monday, overturning the former doctor’s conviction.
The former doctor, James M. Heaps, 69, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in April 2023 after jurors in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County found him guilty of three counts of sexual battery by fraud and two counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person.
U.C.L.A. has already paid about $700 million to settle claims of sexual misconduct against Mr. Heaps, who was affiliated with the university in various roles from 1983 to 2018.
A three-judge panel on the California Court of Appeal ruled on Monday that Mr. Heaps had been denied a fair trial because the trial judge never told Mr. Heaps’s lawyer or the prosecutors on the case about a note that the jury had sent while it was deliberating in October 2022.
The “Note to Judge” said that a recently seated alternate juror had “expressed to us that his limited English interfered with his understanding of the testimony, resulting in every case being the same, and his mind is already made up.”
Under the California Code of Civil Procedure, people who lack “sufficient knowledge of the English language” cannot serve on trial juries. The appeals court ruled that Mr. Heaps’s conviction must be overturned.
“We recognize the burden on the trial court and regrettably, on the witnesses, in requiring retrial of a case involving multiple victims and delving into the conduct of intimate medical examinations,” the appeals court wrote. “The importance of the constitutional right to counsel at critical junctures in a criminal trial gives us no other choice.”
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that it planned to retry Mr. Heaps “as soon as possible.” Mr. Heaps will be sent back to county jail, the office said, and a court could release him on bail.
Courtney M. Thom, a lawyer who represented more than 200 former patients of Mr. Heaps in a $243 million settlement with U.C.L.A., said that some of the women who accused Mr. Heaps of abuse were “completely devastated.”
“Right now, the shock is hitting them very, very hard,” Ms. Thom said on Tuesday. “No one saw this coming.”
Ms. Thom said it was a “big red flag” that the judge never shared the note with the lawyers at Mr. Heaps’s trial. A former sex-crimes prosecutor in Orange County, Calif., Ms. Thom said that judges routinely share even mundane jury notes with prosecutors and defense lawyers, let alone one raising concerns about a juror’s ability to understand English.
“It is, all in all, a brutal reminder that a judicial or procedural error in a criminal trial can have truly devastating consequences for the victims involved,” she said.
Leonard Levine, who was Mr. Heaps’s lawyer during the trial, said that a lawyer working on Mr. Heaps’s appeal had discovered the note while reviewing the court record, more than a year after Mr. Heaps was sentenced.
“Shocked would be putting it mildly,” Mr. Levine said on Tuesday, describing his own reaction to the discovery. “I have never heard before, in my 50 years of practice, of a juror note not being provided to the attorneys, as well as the court.”
Mr. Levine said he was glad that the conviction had been overturned and he expressed confidence that Mr. Heaps, who has denied wrongdoing, would be acquitted in a retrial.
Mr. Heaps was initially charged in 2019 and was indicted in 2021 on 21 counts of sexual misconduct from 2009 to 2018. His conviction in 2022 came as part of a mixed verdict. He was acquitted on seven counts and jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict on nine counts.
The judge who presided over Mr. Heaps’s trial, Michael D. Carter, wrote in an unsworn declaration, which was quoted in the appeals court decision, that when the jury sent the “Note to Judge” he was conducting a “teen court” at a local high school.
When he received an email about it, Judge Carter wrote, he told his judicial assistant to ask the jurors if they could continue to deliberate and, if not, to send them home for the day. The judicial assistant then spoke to the foreman who wrote the note and the juror who was the subject of the note.
“All jurors indicated that they could continue to deliberate,” Judge Carter wrote. “The court did not notify the parties about the note nor did the court inquire with the jury.”
Alan Yockelson, Mr. Heaps’s lead appellate lawyer, said that Judge Carter was “under an obligation” to inform lawyers on both sides.
“Under these circumstances,” he added, “the appellate court rightfully concluded that the denial of the right to counsel at such a critical point in the trial was prejudicial to Dr. Heaps and that the convictions had to be reversed and a new trial conducted.”
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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