Jury convicts West Delray doctor of overprescribing pain pills; to be sentenced Jan. 8
Former West Delray doctor Barry Schultz faces a mandatory minimum of 1,343 years in prison when he is sentenced in January on charges of overprescribing pain medication.
But one juror said his decision to convict Schultz on Friday mostly came down to the high numbers of oxycodone he approved — including 20,000 pills over 10 months to one patient.
“The number of pills being prescribed seemed to be insane,” juror Alan Morin told the Sun Sentinel. “It seemed so far out of reality what he was prescribing.”
The panel of four men and two women deliberated more than 16 hours over three days before finding Schultz guilty of 55 drug trafficking counts. They found him not guilty of 19 charges.
“We did not come to the decision easily,” jury foreman Edward William Brandecker IV said, in an interview after the verdicts. He said the panel was “diligent” in reviewing the evidence and considering testimony from patients and others in the nearly three-week trial.
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Jack Cox said he will sentence Schultz on Jan. 8. The 59-year-old doctor, whose medical license was already suspended, was immediately taken into custody by courthouse deputies. He had been free on bail since his 2011 arrest.
Schultz still has a pending 2013 manslaughter charge and another trial looming in the 2010 overdose death of a 50-year old male patient who was taking methodone — a fact that was not permitted to be shared with the jurors who just convicted him.
The panel reached a strong consensus that prosecutors Barbara Burns and Lauren Godden presented ample evidence against Schultz.
“It seemed almost like a no-brainer,” Morin said.
Authorities began investigating Schultz in 2010 after receiving a complaint from a Lake Worth pharmacy that a patient tried to fill a 30-day supply of oxycodone totaling 1,590 pills. The pharmacist testified he became alarmed because that would be enough medication for nine months.
Officials then seized records from Schultz’s office, revealing that he prescribed 80,350 oxycodone tablets between March 25 and May 11, 2010, compared to 3,450 pills for other ailments, an arrest report shows.
Schultz, who was based in an office at 13550 Jog Road west of Delray Beach, wrote numerous, “outrageous” prescriptions without having necessary consultations with his patients, Godden told the jury.
Many of the prescriptions were filled at Schultz’s “in-house pharmacy,” to his financial gain, the prosecutors said.
“Good faith is having the well being of your patient foremost,” argued Burns. “Not just ply them with medications … this was egregious and even reckless for those patients.”
But Schultz, in his testimony on Monday, and defense attorney Marc Shiner, countered that the doctor only gave prescriptions he thought his patients needed to feel better. They disputed that the quantities of the pills was criminal.
“I felt it was unfair that people who were receiving end-of-life care could have whatever dose to control their pain, and people who were not at the end of their lives and had chronic pain could not have a high dose to help their pain,” Schultz testified.
Brandecker, the foreperson, said he was not impressed with the testimony. He said Schultz clearly had plenty of experience in internal and geriatric medicine, but “being a pain doctor was out of his realm.”
Juror Morin said he found it troubling that doctor didn’t seem to ask about his patients’ present conditions, or discuss alternatives such as surgery, or make attempts to wean them off the powerful drugs.
To help guide jurors in their decision-making, both the prosecution and defense called medical experts to testify about their review of Schultz’s seized medical files and the charges.
Dr. Mark Rubenstein, a Jupiter pain management specialist, said Schultz did not meet a reasonable “standard of care” for the five patients concerning the doctor’s criminal counts. Rubenstein said the prescriptions for the one patient who got the 20,000 pills “did not appear medically necessary based on the records I reviewed.”
But Dr. Thomas Sachy, a Georgia-based psychiatrist who also treats chronic pain disorders, testified on behalf of Schultz that the prescriptions appeared to be “totally appropriate” and “in good faith.” Sachy said there are no legal restrictions on the number of pain pills a doctor can prescribe.
After Friday’s verdicts, defense attorney Shiner said there are solid grounds for an appeal for the doctor he called a “hero to his patients.”
mjfreeman@tribpub.com, 561-243-6642 or Twitter @MarcJFreeman
Filed under: General Problems
I wonder how much information he sold to the DEA, while he was running this apparent pill mill.
And how much info he sold to one or another of the Mexican cartels.
And how much they paid someone in law enforcement, to commit the technical error that gets this conviction reversed on appeal, a few years from now?
The one thing I’ve learned to trust, from all of these creeps, is that they lie constantly and can be trusted ALWAYS to cheat EVERYBODY.
Rotten apples. ….