Second Pretrial Hearing Held in Shaknovsky Wrong-Organ Case
The manslaughter case against former surgeon Thomas Shaknovsky returned to a Walton County courtroom Thursday morning, where attorneys agreed to a third pretrial hearing on November 19 as the slow march toward trial continues. Shaknovsky himself did not appear in court.
The hearing is the latest step in a case that began with a catastrophic August 2024 surgery at Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast, where Shaknovsky was performing a planned splenectomy on 70-year-old William Bryan and allegedly removed the patient’s liver instead — organs that sit on opposite sides of the body. Bryan, a retired Navy veteran from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, died on the operating table. A Walton County grand jury indicted Shaknovsky on a second-degree manslaughter charge in April, and he was arrested in Miramar Beach and booked into the Walton County Jail.
Freeport FL News has followed the case since June, when Bryan’s widow, Beverly, drove seven hours from Alabama to sit through a pretrial hearing in DeFuniak Springs — the same county courthouse complex that serves Freeport residents. Prosecutors with the First Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s office are handling the case, and Shaknovsky pleaded not guilty after his indictment. He was later released from the Walton County Jail on a $75,000 bond.
Thursday’s session produced no rulings. Instead, the state, the defense, and the judge agreed to hold another pretrial hearing in November, and Shaknovsky’s attorney told the court he is beginning to schedule depositions — the witness interviews that will shape whatever ultimately reaches a jury. A civil lawsuit filed last year on Bryan’s behalf against Shaknovsky and hospital staff is proceeding on a separate track.
The case has drawn attention well beyond the Panhandle, in part because of the Florida Department of Health’s emergency suspension of Shaknovsky’s medical license in the weeks after Bryan’s death, and because regulators in Alabama and New York followed with their own actions against the former Panhandle surgeon. For now, the next public window into the criminal case opens November 19, when Shaknovsky is set to appear for his third pretrial hearing.
Originally reported by MyPanhandle (WMBB). Image: MyPanhandle (WMBB).
