James Heaps, a longtime gynecologist at UCLA, pleaded guilty Tuesday to 13 felony sexual abuse charges and received an 11-year prison sentence, capping a legal odyssey that began with a conviction, an appeals court reversal, and ultimately a guilty plea rather than a new trial.
Heaps was originally convicted in 2023 on five counts of sexual battery and sexual penetration involving two patients and sentenced to 11 years. But an appellate court threw out that conviction in February, finding that the trial judge failed to disclose a note from the jury foreman raising questions about a juror's English comprehension. The defense never saw the document.
Rather than face retrial, Heaps entered guilty pleas to 13 felonies spanning five victims. He was again sentenced to the same 11-year term and must register as a sex offender for life.
The charges stemmed from allegations that Heaps sexually assaulted patients during his 35-year career at the university. The initial 2021 indictment covered conduct between 2009 and 2018 involving seven women. Patients described being groped, subjected to unnecessarily invasive exams, and hearing inappropriate sexual comments during medical appointments.
When Heaps was arrested in 2019, UCLA faced mounting legal claims from former patients. The university agreed to settle lawsuits brought by hundreds of his patients for nearly $700 million, one of the largest payouts by a public university in response to sexual misconduct by a campus physician.
John Manly, an attorney who represented more than 200 former patients in suits against UCLA, said the guilty plea and sentence demonstrated that violations of patient rights and dignity carry serious consequences.
Heaps's defense attorney, Leonard Levine, suggested after the original conviction was overturned that exoneration was likely. He did not comment on the guilty plea.
Author James Rodriguez: "Guilty pleas often look like justice, but they can sometimes obscure the real failures that let a predator practice unchecked for decades."
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