His murder conviction junked, Fil-Am ex-doctor sues lawyers for framing him
Former doctor Noel Chua sued three lawyers for allegedly setting him up for a wrongful conviction and then siphoning off his assets. PROJECT Q ATLANTA PHOTO
CAMDEN COUNTY, Georgia — A Filipino American former physician, whose murder conviction was dismissed after he had spent 11 years in prison, sued three lawyers on Sept. 18, for allegedly conspiring to frame him and siphoning $2 million from his assets.
Noel Chua was the first physician in Georgia to face murder charges for improperly prescribing medications with a fatal result.
But Chua claims in a federal lawsuit that Atlanta attorneys Michael Lambros and Andrew Ekonomou, and Florida lawyer Steve Berry worked together with county prosecutors and a former judge to violate his civil rights and fix his wrongful conviction for murder, according to a Law.com report.
Not named as defendants in the suit were the prosecutors and the former judge in Chua’s murder trial, who retired in 2012 while facing ethics charges by the state watchdog agency.
Chua was a popular physician in Camden County when he was charged in 2006 with felony murder and multiple counts of illegally providing prescription drugs “outside the scope of a legitimate medical practice,” according to Law.com.
Chua’s actions allegedly led to the prescription-drug-overdose death of Jamie Carter, his housemate, intern and sometime patient, who died in Chua’s home.
The lawsuit accuses Lambros of turning most of Chua’s assets into legal fees for himself while Chua was in prison.
Lambros was appointed as receiver for Chua’s estate after then-Brunswick Circuit District Attorney Stephen Kelley, now a Superior Court judge, lodged a civil racketeering forfeiture action against Chua following his indictment.
The suit alleges that the law firm then known as Lambros, Atkinson & Ekonomou drained Chua’s estate, which included an oceanfront home with a pool, a medical building, four residential rental properties, an insurance policy and several bank accounts. When Chua was released from prison in 2017, only $14,274 remained of his assets.
After Chua was convicted Ekonomou, who later became an assistant district attorney in the Brunswick Circuit, allegedly tried for nearly three years to keep secret a memo that Berry sent District Attorney Kelley prior to Chua’s trial.
According to Law.com, in that secret memo, Berry, then a county commissioner in the Brunswick Circuit, rated 80 members of the jury pool for Chua’s trial and recommended exclusions to Kelley: “Personally, I would avoid blacks on this jury,” Berry wrote. “I understand you have some constitutional concerns there that have to be kept in mind, but try to avoid them.”
Chua’s attorney, Stephen Reba, said Ekonomou and Berry tried to keep the latter’s memo secret because they knew Chua was wrongfully convicted.
Brunswick Circuit Superior Court Judge Anthony Harrison overturned Chua’s felony murder conviction. The racketeering case was also dropped. Chua pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in return for a sentence of “time served.” He also pleaded guilty to maintaining a house for drug use.
Reba said Chua’s suit “is really about the overreach of quasi-governmental actors … coming in and essentially just robbing [Chua] blind of $2 million without cause, putting him in prison for a decade and then conspiring, post-conviction, to try to cover themselves.”
