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Judge Mary Wiseman denied Aggarwal’s request to be tried separately for each patient’s allegations. Aggarwal, who has pleaded not guilty, is set to begin trial Jan. 4 after a final pre-trial before Christmas.
Wiseman found the evidence surrounding the first patient’s allegations are “highly probative” to the allegations involving the second patient, according to a copy of her decision. The judge decided that, if believed by a jury, the testimony of the first patient corroborates the testimony of the second patient, and vice-versa.
Aggarwal’s attorney, Samuel Shamansky, of Columbus, argued the charges should be tried separately, in part because “the two sets of charges do not overlap temporally or evidentially.”
Shamansky argued a “joined trial would permit evidence to be presented which would not be admissible in separate trials” and that “the evidence is not simple and direct, and is of such an inflammatory nature that the jury would be inescapably prejudiced against” Aggarwal.
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But Wiseman found the evidence in the case is “simple and direct,” and that “there are only two alleged victims, with alleged offenses occurring serially and chronologically.”
“A jury is well capable of segregating the proof required for each alleged victim in this matter,” the judge wrote.
Prosecutors asked Wiseman to overrule Aggarwal’s severance motion and argued that while there are more counts involving the second patient over a longer period of time, “ultimately the timeliness of their sexual abuse are close in time to one another and their disclosures involve defendant using his position as their doctor to conduct unnecessary breast exams that were virtually identical.”
Prosecutors additionally said that in a trial involving the first patient, it is clear that witnesses in that case would also be called as witnesses in the second patient’s case “to establish the location of the events as well as corrective measures that were taken to prevent further incidents.”
Aggarwal was employed by Wright State University’s medical school and practiced at Dayton Children’s under a contract between WSU and the hospital.
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A Dayton Daily News investigation this year found hospital and university administrators opted not to report allegations by the two patients against Aggarwal to police, according to police investigative records obtained by the newspaper using public records laws. After the first complaint, they issued him a warning. After the second, they set up a policy requiring a nurse or other health professional to be in the room whenever he examined a female patient over the age of 10.
Police learned of the allegations when a Children’s manager reported it to police on her own.
At the time of Aggarwal’s August arrest, Dayton Children’s said the hospital strengthened its processes in responding to allegations of this nature and have implemented “one of the most stringent chaperone policies in the country.”
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