Justices side
with two doctors convicted in pain pill schemes
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled for doctors who face criminal charges for overprescribing powerful pain medication in a case arising from the opioid addiction crisis.
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court that prosecutors must prove that doctors knew they were illegally prescribing powerful pain drugs in violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act.
The ruling came as the U.S. has been seeing record numbers of drug overdose deaths, many from the highly lethal opioid fentanyl.
Evaluating the convictions of two doctors who are each facing more than two decades in prison, the justices ruled on a subject on which advocates for patients and doctors had urged the court to distinguish between criminal behavior and medical errors made in good faith.
It did so in the ruling. Prosecutors, Breyer wrote, “must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or intentionally acted in an unauthorized manner.” The justices ruled unanimously for the doctors, though only six endorsed Breyer’s standard for conviction.
Fear of aggressive prosecution already has led doctors to avoid prescribing opioids “against their best medical judgment,” the National Pain Advocacy Center told the court in a written filing.
But the justices did not throw out the convictions of two doctors whose appeal was heard in February. Instead, it ordered federal appeals courts to take a new look at their cases.
The court ruled on appeals from Xiulu Ruan of Mobile, Alabama, and Shakeel Kahn, who practiced medicine in Ft. Mohave, Arizona, and Casper, Wyoming.
Ruan is serving a 21-year federal prison term. Kahn is in prison for up to 25 years. They will get another chance to argue that their convictions should be overturned.
Ruan and a partner, James Couch, were convicted of overprescribing medications at their Physicians Pain Specialists of Alabama clinic and a pharmacy.
Kahn was convicted of conspiracy to unlawfully distribute and dispense controlled substances resulting in death, including oxycodone, an opioid pain reliever, and fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
Jessica Burch, of Lake Havasu City, Arizona, was a patient of Kahn’s who died from an overdose in 2015.
Supreme Court rules for inmates seeking reduced prison terms
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court made it easier Monday for certain prison inmates to seek shorter sentences under a bipartisan 2018 federal law aimed at reducing racial disparities in prison terms for cocaine crimes.
The justices ruled 5-4 that trial judges who are asked to resentence inmates may look at a wide range of factors, including some that have nothing to do with crack cocaine offenses that had produced longer stints in prison, disproportionately for people of color.
The high court settled a disagreement among the nation’s appellate courts over what judges should do in these cases.
The case before the justices involved Carlos Concepcion, who is serving a 19-year sentence after he pleaded guilty to possessing at least five grams of crack cocaine with an intent to distribute.
But the length of Concepcion’s prison term really was determined by previous state court convictions that made him a career offender under federal law.
In 2019, Concepcion asked for a reduced sentence under the First Step Act that President Donald Trump signed into law a year earlier. Concepcion argued that the law made him eligible for a shorter term, but he also pointed to his earlier convictions, one of which had been thrown out and others of which were no longer considered violent crimes under intervening Supreme Court decisions.
Still, the judge refused to consider changes to his sentence.
“The District Court in this case declined to consider petitioner Carlos Concepcion’s arguments that intervening changes of law and fact supported his motion, erroneously believing that it did not have the discretion to do so,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her opinion for the court.
An unusual group of justices joined her, Clarence Thomas, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch.
