Paul Gray’s lawyer acquitted on involuntary manslaughter charges

A doctor who prescribed late Slipknot bassist Paul Gray with anti-anxiety drug Xanax has been cleared of seven counts of involuntary manslaughter, including one in relation to the rocker’s 2010 death. Medic Daniel Baldi, from Des Moines, Iowa, faced allegations of recklessly prescribing seven patients with drugs that allegedly contributed to their death.
Gray’s widow, Brenna, attacked the doctor for giving her husband Xanax when she testified in the case last month (Apr14), insisting he ignored her concerns about the seriousness of the rocker’s addiction issues.
She told the court, “I just knew it was his drug of choice, that he’d struggled with it. So I just wasn’t really sure why he was on it, why he needed it along with the medication he was taking for addiction.”
Baldi’s lawyers maintain their client didn’t prescribe the drugs that caused Gray’s death.
The case was handed over to the jury earlier this week (begs28Apr14), and after two days of deliberations, the panel ruled the prosecution had failed to prove that Baldi had acted so recklessly that he would have been aware that he could kill someone.