Fort Lauderdale Criminal Attorney Blog
There is no question that we have a major problem with opioid addiction in this country. While many of these cases, including ones where people overdose involve illicit narcotics like heroin, many still involve the use of prescription painkillers like Vicodin, Percocet or OxyContin.
In many cases, a person will get prescriptions from various doctors and hospitals and take the take the medications themselves. In other cases, a person will do this same thing, but sell the drugs he or she doesn’t use, so they can buy more drugs. Pills on the street go for a lot more money than they do at a pharmacy, and when you obtain the drugs legally, you likely have insurance that will pay the bill, or at least some of the bill.These days, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), is saying they are making it a priority to get opioids off the street and are now investigating doctors and other healthcare workers. According to a recent news article from the Sun Sentinel, a doctor in Pompano Beach was just arrested in connection with various drug offenses.
Authorities have said this 84-year-old physician, has allegedly been prescribing morphine, oxycodone, and amphetamines to patients who do not have the medical conditions that would make them need such drugs. The police came to his medical office and placed him under arrest, along with two Broward County residents that are 50 and 62 respectively, as well as one other alleged co-conspirator who lives in Orange County and is 36 years of age.
While the doctor is accused to writing prescriptions for patients that did not suffer from medical conditions that caused them to need narcotic painkillers, the other three defendants had been charged with being part of the conspiracy, maintaining files for these patients, taking blood samples and facilitating the drug distribution. Authorities also began the asset forfeiture process and estimate a net of just under the $3 million in assets.
It should be noted that all defendants have merely been accused of crimes as of the time of this article and have not been convicted of any offense in connection with this recent arrest. This means they are all presumed innocent, unless they are proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law by a judge or jury, as this is the constitutional protection known as the presumption of innocence, which we are all afforded.
As our Fort Lauderdale criminal defense attorneys can explain, criminal conspiracy cases, or really any case that involves co-defendants, can be fairly complex. The reason for this is because prosecutors will often try to turn one defendant against another, so they can have a better chance of getting a conviction of the intended target. They may try to introduce statements made by one party against the other party, but this can often be challenged. The reason for this is because you end with the parties fighting against each other, along with the prosecutors, and we have what we call an extra prosecutor problem. This may require your experienced criminal defense lawyer to move to separate or bifurcate the trial if it is in the best interest of his client.
Call Fort Lauderdale Criminal Defense Attorney Richard Ansara at (954) 761-4011. Serving Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties.
Additional Resources:
Pompano Beach doctor arrested at his office, feds say, June 16, 2017, By Tonya Alanez, Sun Sentinel
More Blog Entries:
Intoxication Defense Presented in Broward Domestic Violence Trial, March 29, 2017, Fort Lauderdale Domestic Violence Arrest Lawyer Blog
