By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH | City News Service
A former UCLA campus gynecologist whose conviction on sex-related charges involving two women was reversed by an appeals court in February pleaded guilty Tuesday to 13 felony counts involving five women.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo immediately sentenced James Mason Heaps to 11 years in prison — the same term he was serving before his October 2022 conviction was overturned.
The 69-year-old former doctor was also ordered to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.
Heaps — whose trial was heard in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom across the hallway from the courtroom where he entered his plea — appeared in orange jail clothes as he pleaded guilty to six counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person by fraudulent representation, five counts of sexual battery by fraud and two counts of sexual exploitation of a patient.
One of the victims, who identified herself outside court as Nicole Gumpert, told the defendant in court, “I was not alone. I was one of many. … The truth of what happened that day has always been difficult to bear — the profound grief that you, a former physician, could violate both me and your sworn oath to do no harm. You chose the wrong person. You did not know who I am. You certainly do now. You have finally admitted to what you have done.”
She said the prison sentence “falls far short of what justice truly demands,” but told the former gynecologist that his name “will carry no honor, no dignity, no redemption, only the permanent, irreversible stain of what you chose to do.”
In a statement read by Deputy District Attorney Rosa Zavala, another one of the victims wrote, “I chose not to be present today because I never want to see this person again. I trusted him as a medical professional, and he violated that trust in the most personal and unacceptable way. What happened to me was not just inappropriate, it was a sexual assault.”
She noted that “nothing can undo what he did,” but wrote that she did find “some sense of justice” in him pleading guilty and being a registered lifetime sex offender.
A third victim wrote in a statement read on her behalf that she “never really cared how much time” Heaps was ordered to serve behind bars.
“I just wanted to hear you admit what you did and say you were sorry,” she said in the letter read in court by Zavala, one of the trial’s prosecutors. “I got the guilty plea, but never the apology. Still, I forgive you.”
Heaps’ attorneys, Vicki Podberesky and Tabitha Zimbert, said after the hearing that they had no comment on the guilty plea.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman was set to discuss the plea and sentencing at an afternoon news conference Tuesday.
Heaps was initially convicted of five charges involving two of the women, with jurors deadlocking on nine other counts that involved four women, including one named in a count on which he was convicted. Jurors acquitted him of charges involving two other patients.
On Feb. 2, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ordered the case against Heaps to be sent back for retrial.
In a 31-page ruling, the appellate court panel noted that Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Carter sent his judicial assistant into the jury room twice to speak to the jury about the foreperson’s note describing the jurors’ collective concern that one of the jurors did not speak English sufficiently to deliberate and had already made up his mind, and that the judge did not inquire of the jury or inform the attorneys about the note’s existence.
The appellate court justices found that the note raised a question of whether the juror had a sufficient command of English to perform his duties and that it is “undisputed, including by the trial judge, that the court did not inform counsel of the note and counsel had no opportunity to suggest questions to the judge” or to be heard as to whether the juror was qualified to remain on the panel.
Attorney John Manly, who represented more than 200 former patients of Heaps in a lawsuit that resulted in a settlement with UCLA, said in a statement in February that the reversal of Heaps’ conviction was “an indictment of California’s criminal justice system which allows criminals to threaten public safety and prey upon the most vulnerable.”
“… These brave survivors suffered through a four-year ordeal of prosecution and trial resulting in an 11-year prison sentence for this monster,” Manly added. “Now they are being told that they must start over … Our criminal justice system needs reforms that put victims first.”
Just before imposing the state prison sentence in April 2023, Carter noted that he had received at least 75 character letters on the defendant’s behalf, and said that Heaps was “by all accounts a world-renowned gynecologist specializing in oncology.” He said the letters sent on behalf of Heaps were filled with stories about him saving the lives of his patients.
“But this reputation also serves as an aggravating factor because it caused the victims in this case to entrust their bodies and lives to him,” Carter said then. “It was because of this reputation that he was able to take advantage of the vulnerable position that these victims were in.”
Heaps was indicted in May 2021 on charges involving the seven female patients. He surrendered his medical license in March 2023.
Heaps — who was ordered in 2019 to “cease and desist from the practice of medicine as a condition of bail” after he was first charged that year — served as a gynecologist/oncologist, affiliated with UCLA, for nearly 35 years. At various times, he saw patients at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and at his office at 100 Medical Plaza.
At one time, he was reportedly the highest paid physician in the UC system and had treated about 6,000 patients, attorneys said.
More than 500 lawsuits were filed against Heaps and UCLA, accusing the school of failing to protect patients after becoming aware of the misconduct.
In May 2022, attorneys for 312 former patients of Heaps announced a $374 million settlement of abuse lawsuits against the University of California.
The settlement came on top of a $243.6 million resolution of lawsuits involving about 200 patients announced in February 2022, and a $73 million settlement of federal lawsuits previously reached involving roughly 5,500 plaintiffs.
The lawsuits alleged that UCLA actively and deliberately concealed Heaps’ sexual abuse of patients. UCLA continued to allow Heaps to have unfettered sexual access to female patients — many of whom were cancer patients — at the university, plaintiffs’ attorneys alleged in the lawsuits.
UCLA issued a statement in 2022 saying, “This agreement, combined with earlier settlements involving other plaintiffs, resolves the vast majority of the claims alleging sexual misconduct by James Heaps, a former UCLA Health physician.
“The conduct alleged to have been committed by Heaps is reprehensible and contrary to our values. We are grateful to all those who came forward, and hope this settlement is one step toward providing some level of healing for the plaintiffs involved.
“We are dedicated to providing the highest quality care that respects the dignity of every patient. We are taking all necessary steps to ensure our patients’ well-being in order to maintain the public’s confidence and trust,” the statement continued.