NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Eight contractors were paid more than $80,000 to assess autopsies and other medical information as part of a failed effort to prosecute Dr. Anna Pou for allegedly killing patients at a New Orleans hospital after Hurricane Katrina.Former Attorney General Charles Foti also failed to prosecute two nurses accused of helping Pou.A ninth contract — for $15,000 — was awarded, but an invoice for services was not submitted, records show.The contracts and invoices submitted with them, obtained by The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act request, run as high as $300 an hour. The lowest charge was $75 an hour.Foti accused Pou, a cancer surgeon, and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry of killing critically ill patients with overdoses of a sedative-painkiller mix in the days after the storm, when Memorial Medical Center and other hospitals had no electricity and no way to evacuate.No one was ever indicted, and all three denied the accusations. Both nurses were given immunity for grand jury testimony. Pou was not indicted, and the charges have since been expunged.”This is a prosecution that should never have been brought,” Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said Friday.Caldwell testified before the Louisiana Supreme Court that there might someday be further prosecution for the 34 deaths at Memorial, but not against Pou.The attorney general has not yet tallied the complete cost of the cases against the three; some will not be accounted for separately since the work was done as part of investigators’ and attorneys’ regular schedules.The attorney general’s office was active in the case from September 2005 until a New Orleans grand jury refused to indict on July 24, 2007.Last week, the state Attorney Fee Review Board recommended Pou and her employer, LSU Healthcare Network, be paid more than $450,000 for their legal fees. Most of the money — about $312,000 — would go to LSU. Pou would get about $145,000. The state Legislature must approve the payments.Pou, the case’s primary target, had patients at the hospital when the storm struck on Aug. 29, 2005, and volunteered to stay and care for the critically ill. Budo and Landry were employees of Tenet Healthcare Corp., the private company that operated Memorial at the time, and didn’t qualify for state reimbursement, Pou lawyer Rick Simmons said.The storm flooded the area around the hospital and knocked out electricity. Daytime temperatures spiked to more than 100 degrees. Many of the dead succumbed to dehydration as they waited for four days for boats to rescue them.Ochsner Health System later bought Memorial hospital from Tenet and changed the name to Ochsner Baptist Medical Center. It reopened in January 2009 after renovation.Of the $80,028 Foti paid, the largest payment was to Dr. Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathology consultant, who received $22,049. He concluded 11 patients died from “acute drug toxicity,” and that the deaths should be classified as homicides.Dr. Steven Karch, a consultant in pathology and toxicology, was paid $18,500, and later testified before the Legislature that every case “should have been declared undetermined, because it is impossible to do a scientific analysis of a cadaver that has been in the sun for 10 days.”–Contact The Daily Reveille’s news staff at [email protected]