Pain
Medicine:
Ohio
Doctor
Freed
on
Bail
During
Appeal
of
Drug
Trafficking
Conviction
4/7/06
Columbus physician William Nuckols, convicted on multiple drug trafficking counts for prescribing "unneeded" pain medications, including Oxycontin, and sentenced in February to 20 years in state prison, has regained his freedom after being granted bail while he appeals his conviction. Nuckols' motion for bail during his appeal was granted March 31. Now, he and his attorney are fighting to overturn his conviction. Nuckols is only the latest in an ever-growing number of doctors convicted as drug traffickers by prosecutors who seek to criminalize medical decisions, but lauded by pain patients' advocates as caring physicians operating within the bounds of accepted medical practice. The tension between law enforcement and medicine over prescription pain relievers, primarily opioids, has only been exacerbated by the White House's declaration last year that prescription drug abuse was a rising menace. Although his primary practice was in Columbus, Nuckols was charged over his once-weekly visits to an office on the East Side of Springfield after local pharmacists complained to police about filling large numbers of Oxycontin prescriptions from his patients. Police sent in undercover agents who complained of pain and were prescribed pain pills by Dr. Nuckols. Prosecutors charged that Nuckols was running a "pill mill," and that he prescribed opioids without proper examinations or medical histories, as well as poor record-keeping. But Nuckols and his defense argued that he was prescribing within the accepted bounds of medical practice and serving a poor, minority, underserved community. Many of Nuckols' patients attended the trial and his sentencing and testified on his behalf. In his appeal, Nuckols and defense attorney John Flannery will argue that Nuckols would not have been convicted barring prosecutorial misconduct and improperly presented expert testimony. The state's expert witness at trial was Dr. Theodore Parran, an internist and addictionologist who "searches for reasons not to prescribe, rather than to ease pain," Flannery noted. As such he has no expertise in the field of pain medicine and the court and Nuckols' trial attorney should have challenged his testimony. Prosecutors allowed one of their key witnesses, Raymona Swyers, to testify that she was had been doctor-shopping, or seeking prescriptions from multiple doctors, and that Dr. Nuckols knew it, when in Swyers' original statements to police, she said the doctors were not aware she was seeing other physicians. Prosecutors are bound to disclose such information to the defense, but failed to do so. Another prosecution witness who gave damaging testimony against Dr. Nuckols was a Dr. Romano. Romano, too, had prescribed pain pills to Swyers, and the prosecution knew this, but failed to disclose that information to the defense. As Flannery dryly noted, that Romano had been suckered by the same person as Nuckols "would tend to impeach Dr. Romano's testimony." Nuckols and Flannery will also challenge the judge's instructions to the jury, which they called more akin to a civil proceeding in a standard of care case than a criminal matter involving the crime of drug dealing. Thanks in part to activists with the Pain Relief Network (PRN), which worked with Nuckols and Flannery on the appeal and the bail bid, Nuckols will now have a chance to seriously challenge his conviction.
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