The Nation - News from Jan. 9, 1986

A gold-braided panel was assembled in Washington from which a jury will be chosen to try Navy surgeon Donal Billig, 55, accused of killing five patients through “culpable negligence” in the operating room. The panel that was to produce a court-martial jury of five or more members--all outranking the defendant--included two rear admirals and nine captains, one of them a woman. Billig, a commander, was chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital in the 20-month period that the Navy charges he did “unlawfully kill” the five patients.