A Virginia doctor sentenced to 40 years in prison for prescribing highly addictive opioids more than 500,000 times over a two-year period has been ruled by a federal appeals court, saying instructions given to jurors in his trial misrepresented the law. He was granted a retrial. .
Joel Smithers was convicted in 2019 of more than 800 illegal drug prescriptions.
During his trial, prosecutors said patients from five states drove hundreds of miles to see him to get prescriptions for oxycodone, fentanyl and other powerful painkillers. Authorities said Smithers led a drug distribution ring that contributed to the opioid abuse crisis in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
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In a ruling issued Friday, a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Smithers’ conviction and ordered a new trial.
Jurors in Smithers’ trial must find that to convict Smithers of prescribing illegal drugs, he did so “without a legitimate medical purpose or beyond the scope of medical practice.” I was instructed not to do so.
But the appeals court ruled that jury instructions were invalid, citing a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said a defendant must have committed the wrongdoing “intentionally or knowingly” in order to be found guilty of the crime. It was deemed appropriate. A jury convicted Smithers in 2019, but his appeal was still pending at the time the verdict was handed down, making his case subject to a 2022 Supreme Court decision.
Pictured here is a bag of fentanyl pills made to look like oxycodone. Joel Smithers, a Virginia doctor sentenced to 40 years in prison for prescribing hundreds of thousands of doses of addictive opioids, was granted a new trial due to mismanagement in his original trial. . (Craig Kowlas/Fresno Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Writing a 3-0 opinion for a panel of the Fourth Circuit, Judge Roger Gregory cited Smithers’ testimony at trial, noting that nearly all of the patients had been involved in serious car or workplace accidents and had legitimate reasons to do so. He said he believes it has a medical purpose. For each prescription he wrote. Gregory said the defense acquitted Smithers of each of the unlawful distribution charges, even though “the jury very likely did not believe Mr. Smithers’ testimony that he was acting for a legitimate medical purpose.” He wrote that he had submitted evidence that could lead to. .
“In short, the instructional error was not harmless because there was evidence that could have led the jury to reach a contrary verdict,” Gregory wrote.
During Mr. Smithers’ trial, one receptionist testified that patients sometimes waited up to 12 hours to see Mr. Smithers, and that Mr. Smithers sometimes kept his office open past midnight. Prosecutors say Smithers had no insurance and received nearly $700,000 in cash and credit cards over two years.
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U.S. Attorney Christopher Kavanaugh said in a statement Monday that he “understands the Fourth Circuit’s decision in light of recent changes in the law and looks forward to retrying the defendant.”
Smithers’ attorney, Beau Brindley, said that after the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling, “the only thing that determines a doctor’s guilt or innocence is his or her own subjective belief in the prescription.”
“Under this new legal standard, the focus will now be solely on Dr. Smithers’ intentions, and I look forward to a complete exoneration at trial,” Brindley said in a statement.
