WSJ Publishes Op-Ed on Not Guilty Verdict for Pain Doctor Obtained by Howard Cooper, Benjamin Wish and Hillary Lehmann
The Wall Street Journal on June 13, 2015, published an Op-Ed piece written by prominent Boston criminal defense and civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate commenting on the recent acquittal of Dr. Joseph Zolot and Nurse Practitioner Lisa Pliner on multiple counts of alleged violations of federal conspiracy and drug distribution laws.
Dr. Zolot was represented by Todd & Weld attorneys Howard M. Cooper, Benjamin J. Wish, and Hillary A. Lehmann and was acquitted after a 26-day trial.
In the WSJ opinion article, attorney Silverglate questions the legitmacy of federal drug prosecutors using drug laws to prosecute pain physicians where there is little, if any, guidance given to physicians about the line between legitimate medical treatment and improper prescribing.
“This prosecution,” Silverglate writes, ” shows why drug warriors need either to clarify the currently indecipherable line between treating pain and unlawfully feeding drug addicts’ habits, or get out of the business of policing and terrorizing physicians. Unfortunately, the government uses legal ambiguity for tactical advantage and will not readily clarify the lines it expects doctors to follow at their peril.”
Dr. Zolot was a Needham, Mass.-based pain medicine physician whose office was raided by the government in May 2007, after which he was indicted on multiple counts of unlawfully prescribing opioids such as OxyContin, Fentanyl and Methadone to patients. Nurse Pliner was accused of participating in the drug dealing operation. A first trial resulted in a hung jury, after which U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz decided to retry the case.
Following his acquittal, Dr. Zolot publicly expressed his hope that the verdict would help doctors feel less intimidated by the federal government in treating patients who are in chronic pain with available pain medications.
Filed under: General Problems
All the doctors who have been charged for bogus claims need to make sure their lawyers attempt to have as many chronic pain sufferers on the juries as they can get. Also all chronic pain sufferers who recieve a jury duty notice needs to serve on jury duty for this reason. It’s the doctors who do stick up for chronic pain rights that are being punished, so it’s time that more pain sufferers start dealing with their pain and serve on jury duty to aquit all our doctors.
Dr. Zolot was acquitted because of the community involvement and recognition that the attacks on doctors is illegal government overreach, creating crime where there is no crime, through creative restructuring of statutes, as shown in Sidney Powell’s Licensed to Lie. The Russian community recognized government wrongdoing. Now Americans need to recognize that our government is no better than the repressed Soviet government or Hitler’s regime, putting innocent people in prison simply because they can. I am explaining this also in a post on my website, http://www.doctorsofcourage.org. Doctors under attack need to come out and create publicity on what the government is doing. As long as we sit back in silence, the out-of-control DOJ will continue to prey on the most compassionate among us.
Believe me it would just make it harder to get needed pain meds if the laws were made clear. Look at what the CDC GUIDELINES have done. I am happy to see this doctor get off but what did it cost him and his patients?
Silverglate wrote “Three Felonies a Day”
About the gotcha game played by law enforcement vs physicians.
Witch hunt was not stoppped by Dr Zolot’s victory