Doctor ‘Pill Mill’ Convictions Partly Undone After SCOTUS Ruling

Two doctors convicted of unlawfully dispensing opioids had some of their convictions vacated when the Eleventh Circuit ruled that their jurors’ instructions on criminal intent didn’t comply with recent US Supreme Court guidance.

The jury instructions, which indicated that a prescription for controlled substances is lawful if done in “good faith” and in accordance with accepted medical standards, didn’t adequately convey that the defendants must have “knowingly or intentionally” prescribed outside the usual course of their professional practices, the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held Thursday in an opinion vacating the doctors’ substantive drug convictions.

• The court’s decision comes on remand from the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Ruan v. United States, which made it harder to convict doctors in connection with “pill mill” arrangements by requiring prosecutors to prove that doctors knew they were acting in an unauthorized manner, or intended to do so
• Though the Eleventh Circuit vacated the doctors’ substantive drug convictions, it affirmed other convictions on conspiracy charges, finding that these convictions weren’t affected by the improper jury instruction
• The defendants are two Alabama doctors sentenced to more than 20 years in prison and ordered to pay millions of dollars in restitution after prosecutors accused them of running a pill mill that prescribed millions of doses of opioids and other controlled substances outside the usual course of professional medical practice.

The doctors are variously represented by Dennis J. Knizley of Mobile, Ala.; Davis Zipperman Kirschenbaum & Lotito LLP; Friedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman LLP; Gordon G. Armstrong III PC; Darley Law Firm LLC; Law Office of L. Burton Finlayson; Steve Martinie of Whitefish Bay, Wis.; Church Law Firm LLC; Madden & Soto; and Arthur T. Powell III PC.

Attorneys with the Department of Justice and the US Attorney’s Office in Mobile, Ala., prosecuted the case.

The case is United States v. Ruan, 2023 BL 2706, 11th Cir., No. 17-12653, 1/5/23.