ACLU takes Drug Enforcement Administration to court

At issue is a Providence man’s request to open records in ‘pill mill’ case

http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20151225/NEWS/151229517

    PROVIDENCE, R.I. — What began as a graduate school thesis project has led freelance journalist Phil Eil on a years-long quest for documents that has spiraled into a legal battle with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration over access to records.

    In a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in federal court in Rhode Island, Eil is seeking evidence presented to the jury in the 2011 trial of Paul Volkman, an Ohio doctor serving four life sentences for his role in operating a pain management clinic like a “pill mill,” leading to patients’ deaths. Eil is asking U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell Jr. to order the records released and to find they were wrongfully withheld by the DEA.

    “There is great public interest in seeing where the line is drawn between medicine and drug dealing,” said Eil, 30, of Providence, a former news editor of the defunct Providence Phoenix and an adjunct writing professor at the Rhode Island School of Design.

    The DEA, which investigated Volkman’s case, is refusing to release some of the records and heavily redacting others. They argue that witnesses’s private medical information is at stake and that disclosure of such information is not required or permitted under federal law. The federal government is asking that Eil’s complaint be dismissed. U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha’s office is representing the DEA and declined comment through a spokesman.

    “A significant portion of these exhibits consists of patient medical records and other similar materials containing highly personal information about Volkman’s victims,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard B. Myrus wrote in court documents. The records are exempt from disclosure because they fall into two exempted categories: medical or law enforcement records.

    “The limited disclosure of this information at trial did not extinguish the privacy rights of the third parties involved, i.e. Volkman’s patients, and release of these records now would constitute an impermissible invasion of their personal privacy, which would expose their medical histories.”

    Eil said he became intrigued with Volkman’s case in 2009 when Volkman asked Eil’s parents — after years without contact — to attend his wife’s funeral. Eil’s father and Volkman had attended the University of Rochester as undergraduates and went on to the same federally funded medical and doctorate program at the University of Chicago. A classmate had Googled Volkman and learned he had been indicted in 2007 on 22 counts, including prescribing painkillers that authorities said led to the death of at least four people.

    At the time, Eil had just enrolled in a nonfiction master’s program at the Columbia University School of the Arts and thought that the Volkman story could be his thesis project. He reached out to Volkman, who he said was convinced he was performing his medical duties in prescribing the drugs.

    “He believes he’s in prison for practicing medicine,” Eil said in a recent interview. Eil soon thought he had the makings of a book.

Filed under: General Problems