Florida doctor: my guilty plea in a sexual battery case shouldn’t affect my license
Jacksonville Dr. Om Kapoor kept his Florida medical license despite a 2021 misdemeanor conviction after a patient said Kapoor masturbated during an exam. Kapoor tried to argue he should keep his license after pleading guilty to battery after a boy accused him of rape because, Kapoor insisted, he didn't actually rape the child.
Administrative law judge Lawrence Stevenson and the Florida Board of Medicine didn't agree with Kapoor. The board followed Stevenson's recommendation from a June hearing and suspended Kapoor on Sept. 3. The suspension will remain in effect until at least two years after his criminal charge probation ends. According to the Florida Dept. of Corrections website, Kapoor's scheduled to be off probation on March 24, 2026.
That probation started when Kapoor got sentenced in Duval County Circuit Court on March 24, 2023 or one year, five months and 10 days before the board suspended Kapoor.
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Though his online Florida Department of Health license profile lists his status is listed as "Retired," the report from the administrative law hearing said the 54-year-old Kapoor "expressed a desire to return to active medical practice."
Take the napkin, leave the office
After becoming licensed in Florida on April 10, 2008, Kapoor started working as an infectious disease specialist at Baptist Medical Center in Jacksonville as well as running an infectious disease office practice. The medical center's risk manager sent a report to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office in 2012 that alleged Kapoor "engaged in sexual misconduct with a 20-year-old male patient."
No arrests were made. The Florida Department of Health said nobody notified the agency about this report.
That mention of the 2012 allegations comes from the 2018 emergency restriction order on Kapoor, an action taken after the department did hear about Kapoor's arrest in December 2017.
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According to an arrest report and the restriction order, Kapoor told his 34-year-old male patient in July 2017 that he had Lyme disease, a disease ferried by ticks. The patient saw Kapoor for follow up exams and, on Dec. 17, 2017, Kapoor told him he'd tested positive again for Lyme disease. Kapoor asked him to drop his pants, underwear and lean over the examination table. Kapoor later asked him to "spread (his) butt cheeks."
"After several minutes," the restriction order said, "(the patient) heard [Kapoor] breathe heavily and moan."
The patient turned around and screamed at the site of saw Kapoor pleasuring himself into a napkin. Undeterred by his patient's screams, Kapoor finished into the napkin, then threw it away. The patient took the napkin out of the trash can and straight to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.
A JSO detective wrote in the arrest report, "I asked [Kapoor] if there was any reason the victim should be in possession of a napkin with his semen, and he said no."
While the prosecution of this case took over three years and it made news around the state, Kapoor could keep practicing. The only limits in the restriction order prevented him from seeing male patients without a licensed healthcare professional in the room.
On Sept. 9, 2021, a jury found Kapoor not guilty of misdemeanor battery, but guilty of exposure of sexual organs. Kapoor got sentenced to 12 months in county jail.
Kapoor's motion for a new trial based on "ineffective counsel" by his attorney Nah-Deh E.W. Simmons got rejected by Duval County Judge Robin Lanigan in December 2023:
"From the evidence presented at the hearing, it is evident that [Kapoor} and his trial counsel,Mr. Simmons, discussed trial strategy and, in fact, were successful on one of the two counts based on that strategy. While some decisions made between [Kapoor] and his counsel at trial are different than what other defense attorneys have made, from the evidence, it does not appear Mr.Simmons was ineffective in his representation of [Kapoor]..."
By the time of that ruling, Kapoor had pleaded guilty to another criminal charge.
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A sleepover, keys and a cell phone
Testimony before the administrative law judge said Kapoor, his wife and son became friends with another family around 2010 or 2011 through shared religious beliefs. The other family included two kids, a son a few years older than the Kapoors' son and around his age.
Their mother testified Om Kapoor was "especially solicitous" of her son, "pampering him and giving him treats."
But, it wasn't until a 2020 family argument, the mother said, that her son said to her that she would not trust him if he told her that Dr. Kapoor had raped him" in 2017.
The mother testified she thought her son had been trying to tell her "for some time, but had not known how to say it. She believe that he was only then becoming mature enough to understand what Dr. Kapoor had done to him."
She said when the son was 9 years old, they had important interviews in the process of getting their green cards. Kapoor, she said, said her son should stay at his house because the kids were too young to go to the interview.
The boy told Jacksonville Sheriff's Office detectives after he went to bed, Kapoor got into bed with him, pulled his underwear down and began to rape him. He said he halted the sexual battery by pretending he was waking up from a nightmare. He said Kapoor raced out of the room, keys and cell phone crashing to the bedroom floor. At breakfast the next day, he said, he returned the cell phone and keys to Kapoor, telling him where he'd found them.
Kapoor and his wife, administrative law judge's report said, "adamantly denied" to the administrative law judge that the boy had ever spent the night at their house.
"[Kapoor's wife] testified that no child outside her family has ever spent the night at her house," the report said. "She stated that Indian culture and tradition frowns on leaving children at anyone's home without their parents."
She also "denied that Dr. Kapoor showed any special favoritism toward (the boy). She stated that Dr. Kapoor is a caring, loving and affectionate person and treats all children with love and affection."
At the administrative law judge hearing, Kapoor put forth the idea that the boy accused him of rape because he'd been punished for spraying potpourri in Kapoor's son's eyes at a party. The masturbation case being in local media, Kapoor said, gave the boy the idea.
The day before the start of Kapoor's trial on two counts of sexual battery, with a maximum sentence of life, prosecutors offered a plea deal — one count of felony battery, no more incarceration beyond the 313 days he'd spent already in county jail. Kapoor took the deal noting he was pleading guilty "because it is in my best interest" and not because he was "guilty of the offense as outlined on this plea form."
Kapoor's criminal defense attorney, Michael Ceballos, testified that plea deal demonstrated the weakness of the prosecution's case, but "there are no guarantees in the jury system and Dr. Kapoor was facing a mandatory life sentence," the hearing report said.
"Dr. Kapoor argues that his "best interest" guilty plea in some way disconnects the crime of felony battery from his practice of medicine," administrative law judge Stevenson wrote. But, while acknowledging the possible truth in what Ceballos said, "the entry of a "best interest" plea does not alter the fact that the defendant pled guilty."
Also, Stevenson said, it's a guilty plea to felony battery in which the victim was a child.
So, Stevenson recommended the suspension punishment that the state Board of Medicine enacted.
