A lady who performed an illegal treatment on the owner of an unlicensed beauty salon, who passed away from an overabundance of anesthesia, was found guilty of manslaughter.
More than six years after the death in September 2017, the NSW District Court jury began deliberations on Wednesday afternoon and swiftly returned its decision this morning.
Since its start in February, Jie Shao’s trial has scrutinized her actions and inactions prior to and during the demise of 35-year-old Jean Huang at the Medi Beauty Clinic she ran in Chippendale, an inner-city suburb of Sydney.
Following the treatment, which at the time was not authorized in Australia and involved injecting hyaluronic acid as filler into her breasts, Huang passed away in a hospital.
Although Shao’s attorneys accepted that Huang had accidentally received an excessive amount of the local anesthetic lidocaine, they contended that the jury would not find Huang’s actions to be so risky or to be so far below reasonable standards of care as to justify criminal charges.
They tried to persuade the jury that important prosecution witnesses were lying for financial gain and had set Shao up as a handy scapegoat.
Shao’s defense team claimed that she had carried out the surgery at Huang’s request rather than a male at the clinic who departed Australia following her passing and has never returned.
The jury was informed that Shao had arrived in Sydney just a day prior to carrying out the surgery and had pretended to be a doctor in texts she sent to Huang.
In China and Australia, where she completed her medical studies and worked as an intern in hospitals, Shao was not licensed to practice medicine.
Her sentencing is scheduled for a later time.
