The Board of Examiners for Nursing voted Wednesday to revoke the license of Jermaine V. Richards, 34, after holding a hearing. Richards did not attend the hearing because he is being held on a $500,000 bond at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers on a charge that he murdered his is ex-girlfriend, Alyssiah Wiley, 20, of West Haven in 2013. After an extensive search, her dismembered body was found in Trumbull in May 2013, less than two miles from Richards’ home, the Connecticut Post has reported.
Richards, who denied the nursing charges in a letter to the state Department of Public Health in December, was not represented by a lawyer at the hearing. The board found that he slept while on duty at a patient’s home, misrepresented himself as a registered nurse, violated the patient’s privacy by bringing a visitor to the home and then had a physical altercation with the visitor, state records show. Richards cared for the patient in 2012 and 2013.
Richards’ nursing license was inactive while the DPH charges were pending against him. Christopher Stan, a DPH spokesman, said the department’s focus is on the standard of patient care and the charges against Richards were unrelated to the murder charge.
In March, for the second time in a year, a jury deadlocked on a verdict in the murder case and a mistrial was declared. His lawyer at the time, New Haven lawyer Leo E. Ahern, said last week that he is no longer representing him but he expects prosecutors to try Richards for a third time. His current criminal lawyer, Walter D. Hussey of Hartford, could not be reached for comment.
After an unrelated hearing Wednesday, the board placed the registered nurse license of Dawn C. Palmer of Pomfret Center, on probation for one year after finding that she had violated an earlier probation by testing positive for opioids in 2016, records show. She was cleared of charges of working as a nurse without state approval.
