Alexander DeLuca, M.D.
Addiction, Pain, & Public Health website
[Home] [Library]
[Slides] [Search]
[Medline] [Links]
[Statements
of Purpose, Ownership, Sponsorship. Privacy, Email Confidentiality,
and Advertising Policies]
Pill Mill Case Against 2 Women Winds Down Jury Deliberations May Start
Monday
Susan Finch; The Times-Picayune
(New Orleans); 2006-07-22. Posted: 2006-07-22.
[Identifier:
http://www.doctordeluca.com/Library/WOD/WPS13-NoPillMill/NoPillMillDefenseRests06.htm]
[Source:
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p
Related resources:
PAIN RELIEF NETWORK website
War on Doctors Academic and Legal archives ;
Drug War Journalism and Advocacy archives
See also:
The New Orleans 'Pill Mill' Case - Venal Pols and Prosecutors Conspire to Ban
Pain Management
WAR ON PAIN SUFFERERS
collection #13; compiled by Alexander DeLuca; 2006-07-15
War on Doctors and Pain Crisis Weekly -
RSS feed:
HTML view:
Testimony ended Friday in the three-week federal trial of the owner and a former staff physician of three New Orleans area pain management clinics for allegedly conspiring to distribute narcotics without a legitimate medical purpose.
The jury was given the weekend off after working Saturdays since the trial began. It is expected to begin deliberations Monday after getting instructions from U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon and hearing closing statements from attorneys for the government and defendants Cherlyn "Cookie" Armstrong and Dr. Suzette Cullins. Armstrong's businesses, Scherer's clinics in Gretna, Metairie and Slidell, were shut down by federal agents last year.
Armstrong, a registered nurse, also is charged with money laundering by plowing profits from her $150,000-a-week cash business into numerous bank accounts and real estate purchases. The 46-year-old businesswoman did not take the witness stand and was not required by law to do so.
But the jury heard from Cullins, 44, on Thursday and again Friday morning.
Cullins, who sometimes saw as many as 200 patients a day, said she never
knowingly prescribed two-week supplies of pills to kill pain, relax muscles and
relieve anxiety to any patients who did not have a legitimate need for the
medicine.
One person for whom Cullins prescribed pain medication was a 25-year-old woman
recruited as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration after her
arrest on a marijuana charge. The DEA agreed not to prosecute the woman, who
also admitted making $600 a week loading up on excess pain prescriptions and
selling the drugs on the black market, if she wore a wire to capture evidence at
the clinics.
Her testimony, and recordings, were part of the government's case.
Both Thursday and Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill McSherry confronted
Cullins with patient charts showing that less than two weeks after writing
prescriptions for some patients at one Scherer location, she issued
prescriptions to the same patients when they saw her at another of the clinics.
Before Cullins ended her testimony, her attorney, Jeffrey Smith, made sure the
jury was reminded of her explanation of how that happened.
"Is it your contention you saw patients at different clinics in a 14-day period
and didn't remember seeing them at different clinics?" he asked.
"Yes," Cullins answered.
Prosecutors claim the Scherer clinics were nothing more than assembly line
operations in which doctors saw patients for less than a minute before giving
them prescriptions for controlled drugs.
Attorneys for the defense maintain that the clinics provided a valuable medical
service to thousands of patients forced to live with pain.
Two other Scherer's doctors were charged as a result of the DEA investigation.
Dr. Joseph Guenther, who was a witness for the government against Cullins and
Armstrong, pleaded guilty last month to four counts of prescribing narcotics
without a legitimate medical purpose. Dr. Betty DeLoach entered a guilty plea,
also last month, to a charge of concealing a felony. Both are scheduled to be
sentenced in September.
Susan Finch can be reached at sfinch@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3340.
[END]
|
Dr. DeLuca's Addiction, Pain, and Public Health Website |
||
|
Alexander DeLuca, M.D. |
Originally posted: 2006-07-22 |
|
|
All Email to: adeluca@doctordeluca.com |
Most recently
revised: 2006-07-22 |
|
|
|
||
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
