A woman has been found guilty of manslaughter after performing a banned procedure on the operator of an unlicensed beauty clinic who died after being given too much anaesthetic.
The NSW District Court jury quickly delivered its verdict this morning after beginning deliberations on Wednesday afternoon, more than six years after the September 2017 death.
Jie Shao’s trial began in February and has pored over what she did – and did not do – before and after 35-year-old Jean Huang lost consciousness at the Medi Beauty Clinic she operated at Chippendale, in inner-city Sydney.
Huang died in hospital after the procedure, which was not approved in Australia at the time and involved hyaluronic acid being injected into her breasts as filler.
Shao’s lawyers acknowledged Huang was mistakenly given too much of the local anaesthetic lidocaine but argued the jury would not be satisfied her actions were so dangerous or fell so far below reasonable standards of care that they should warrant criminal punishment.
They sought to convince jurors key prosecution witnesses had a financial motive to lie and had used Shao as a convenient patsy.
Shao’s defence argued she had performed the procedure when Huang asked her to do it rather than a man at the clinic, who left Australia after her death and has never returned.
The jury heard Shao had been in Sydney for 24 hours before performing the procedure and had held herself out as a doctor in messages exchanged with Huang.
Shao was not registered as a medical practitioner in Australia or China, where she studied and interned at hospitals.
She will be sentenced at a later date.
