By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
A former employee of two Central Jersey hospitals accused of raping patients is due back in court at the end of November.
Richard D. Smith, of Princeton, who worked at University Medical Center of Princeton and prior to that Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, in Hamilton, has been offered 24 years in state prison by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office. He faces aggravated sexual assault and related charges stemming from alleged assaults on female patients in April 2013, at RWJ, and then last November at University Medical Center, where he was a patient care technician.
He was originally arrested in November and charged with the alleged assault of a 25-year-old woman at University Medical Center, but a subsequent investigation revealed the earlier alleged incident at the other hospital.
He has pleaded not guilty.
Mr. Smith, 41, on Friday was in Middlesex County Superior Court, in New Brunswick, for a status conference on his case. There were few developments, although at one point he indicated he wanted to say something.
After conferring outside the courtroom with Mr. Smith’s attorney and the assistant prosecutor handling the case, Judge Diane Pincus told him he would be doing a “disservice” to himself if he said anything. He took her advice.
In the meantime, deputy public defender Susan M. Martin, his lawyer, is in the midst of having an investigation done to find mitigating factors, to perhaps get a better plea offer from the Prosecutor’s Office.
Mr. Smith, who remains held in jail, is due back before the judge Nov.28.
