A San Mateo County judge on Monday dismissed all attempted murder charges against Dharmesh Patel, the 45-year-old Pasadena radiologist who drove his Tesla off a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway in January 2023 with his wife and two young children inside the vehicle. The family plunged roughly 300 feet at Devil’s Slide in Pacifica, California. All four survived. And now, Patel walks free.
The dismissal came after doctors submitted positive progress reports about Patel’s participation in a two-year mental health diversion program, a program the local district attorney fought against and now calls the luckiest break a defendant could get.
San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told the Mercury News the outcome left him with few words. Fox News Digital reported that Wagstaffe said simply:
“He got the break of a lifetime.”
That may be the understatement of the year.
In January 2023, Patel drove his Tesla off Devil’s Slide, a notoriously steep stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway in San Mateo County. The vehicle dropped roughly 300 feet. His wife Neha, then 41, their seven-year-old daughter, and their four-year-old son were all inside.
First responders cut the family out of the wreckage. All four survived, a fact that borders on miraculous given the distance of the fall.
Court documents painted a grim picture of what led to the crash. Neha Patel told authorities her husband “did it on purpose” and needed a “psych evaluation.” She also said he was depressed. Her most direct statement, per those same court documents: “He said he was going to drive off the cliff.”
Patel was charged with first-degree attempted murder.
At a 2024 court hearing, Patel’s defense lawyers argued he had been suffering from delusions driven by the war in Ukraine and the fentanyl crisis. An unnamed psychologist reported that Patel’s greatest delusion involved a fear that his children could be kidnapped and molested, a fear the psychologist connected to Patel’s fixation on Jeffrey Epstein.
In July 2024, a judge ordered Patel into a two-year mental health diversion program. He was required to live at his parents’ home in Belmont, California, under GPS monitoring. Wagstaffe and his office opposed the placement. It didn’t matter.
AP News reported that the judge was legally required to dismiss the charges once Patel completed the program, a consequence of a California law that took effect in 2023. Wagstaffe laid out the bind prosecutors faced:
“If the person who’s given mental health diversion follows the treatment plan, there’s nothing that can be done and at the end of the two years he gets it wiped out of his record.”
Read that again. A man drives his family off a cliff. His wife says he announced his intentions beforehand. He is charged with attempted murder. And a state law mandates that if he completes a treatment plan, the charges vanish, not reduced, not suspended. Dismissed.
The New York Post reported that the judge who dismissed all three attempted murder counts was San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Sharon K. Cho. The ruling followed positive reports from Patel’s clinicians indicating he was doing well in the mental health program.
After the ruling, Patel embraced his wife in the courtroom. The two left together. Questions about judicial decisions that let defendants walk free have drawn scrutiny across the country, including cases where judges have ordered the release of detained individuals under various legal rationales.
Neha Patel’s own words to the court captured the family’s position. The New York Post quoted her saying:
“We need him in our life. We’re not a family without him.”
That a wife would stand by her husband after such an ordeal is her right. But the question this case raises is not about one family’s private reconciliation. It is about whether a state law designed for mental health treatment has created a mandatory off-ramp from serious criminal accountability, one that prosecutors cannot challenge and judges cannot override.
The California mental health diversion statute that enabled Patel’s outcome took effect in 2023. Under its terms, a defendant who qualifies for diversion and completes the prescribed treatment plan must have charges dismissed. The district attorney’s office has no veto. The judge has no discretion to deny dismissal once the program is finished.
Wagstaffe made clear he opposed Patel’s entry into the program from the start. His office fought it. But the law left him no room to maneuver. The result is a case in which a man charged with three counts of attempted murder, against his own wife and children, faces no criminal record at all.
This is not an isolated pattern. Across the country, decisions by courts and government officials to release individuals charged with or convicted of serious offenses have drawn sharp public criticism. In North Carolina, former Governor Roy Cooper has faced mounting scrutiny over the COVID-era release of thousands of inmates, raising similar questions about whether public safety takes a back seat to policy preferences.
Patel’s defense team argued he suffered from episodic major depression with hallucinations. The psychologist’s testimony described paranoid delusions about child trafficking. These are serious mental health conditions, and no one should dismiss the reality of psychiatric illness.
But the law as written does not distinguish between a shoplifter with anxiety and a man who drove his children off a 300-foot cliff. If you complete the program, the charges go away. Period.
Fox News Digital reached out to both the district attorney’s office and Patel’s attorney for comment. Neither response was reported in the article. Several questions remain open.
Did Patel complete the full two-year program, or was it terminated early? What did the clinicians’ reports actually say about his condition and prognosis? What safeguards, if any, remain in place now that the charges are dismissed? And does Patel retain his medical license?
The case also raises a broader question about the diversion statute itself. When defendants in violent cases reach plea agreements or receive lenient outcomes, the public rightly asks whether the system prioritizes the rights of the accused over the safety of victims, even when the victims choose forgiveness.
Neha Patel may have forgiven her husband. Their children may grow up in a reunited household. That is the family’s business.
But the people of California are entitled to ask whether a law that mandates the erasure of attempted murder charges, charges supported by the victim’s own contemporaneous statements, serves justice or merely serves a policy experiment. Other states have moved in the opposite direction, strengthening criminal statutes and defending them against legal challenges.
Wagstaffe did not hold back. He told reporters the judge was “required by the law” to dismiss. He said there was “nothing that can be done.” He called it “the break of a lifetime.”
A radiologist drove his wife and two small children off a 300-foot cliff. His wife told authorities he announced his plan in advance. He was charged with three counts of attempted murder. And California law guaranteed that if he followed a treatment plan for two years, every charge would disappear as if it never happened.
When the law itself is the problem, no amount of good clinical reports can make the outcome feel like justice.
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