DrugBuyers.Com: The DEA Doesn't Always Win

Heres an article someone sent me. Pain Doctor Acquitted in Virginia
- Feds Fail to Win Single Count
November 7, 2003

Roanoke, Virginia, pain specialist Dr. Cecil Knox walked out of a
federal courthouse a free man October 31. Despite a high-powered and
highly-publicized prosecution of Knox as a murderous, profit-driven
Dr. Feelgood, federal prosecutors failed to convict him on any of
the 69 counts of illegal prescribing and associated Medicare fraud
with which they had charged him. After seven weeks of testimony and
more than a week of deliberations, jurors acquitted Knox of all 30
of the drug charges and were unable to reach a verdict on the
remaining, mostly fraud counts.

Also walking away free were Knox's nurse, Beverly Boone, who was
acquitted on 60 charges (the jury hung on one count) and counselor
Willard James, who faced five fraud counts. The jury failed to reach
a verdict on any of the counts against James.

Prosecutors have announced that they will retry Knox on the
remaining counts in a matter of weeks, but Knox, his supporters, and
the growing movement to rein in the Justice Department's aggressive
stance toward pain management specialists are elated. "Right now,
there is no anxiety," Knox told the Knight-Ridder newspaper
syndicate. "I feel very good and very positive about the future.
I think I'm going to be back, my practice will be back."

"Cecil Knox, Beverly Boone, and Willard James are real American
heroes," said Siobhan Reynolds, director of the Pain Relief Network
(http://www.painreliefnetwork.org), who witnessed the trial and
whose organization emerged to fight just such unwarranted
prosecutions. "They stood up to an overwhelming power and bet on
truth and justice," she told DRCNet. "And these days, that takes a
lot of courage."

The prosecution of Dr. Knox is only the latest of a string of
prosecutions of pain management specialists across the country. But
its outcome so far is a blow to the Justice Department's already
staggering campaign against what it views as doctors running "pill
mills" but what patients' and doctors' advocates see as physicians
applying the latest and most effective techniques of pain
management. In recent years, federal or state prosecutors have
brought charges against dozens of doctors for their opiate
prescription practices, while hundreds have been disciplined by
state medical boards. Despite some successes, such as the murder
conviction of Florida Dr. James Graves, more convictions have been
overturned on appeal, and now the Justice Department has lost
outright in the Knox case. Still pending is the prosecution of
nationally known Virginia pain specialist Dr. William Hurwitz.

"These people should never have been prosecuted," said Reynolds, who
is preparing a documentary on the plight of pain patients and
doctors. "Cecil was prescribing medications in combinations and in
dosages that the Justice Department doesn't agree with. Justice
isn't supposed to have an opinion on medical practices, but it does.
Then they bring a drug dealing case to stop this practice with which
they don't agree. It's a shameful manipulation of the law," she
said.

While federal prosecutors portrayed Knox as a money-hungry,
conscienceless fraud, patients and other witnesses disagreed. "Over
the past seven weeks, there's been a complete and total character
assassination of Dr. Knox," argued Knox's attorney, Toby Anderson
said during closing arguments. And from the verdicts, it appears the
jury agreed.

For Reynolds, the Knox trial is just one more battle, but the war
may be turning in the direction of patients and doctors. "We're
making real progress now," she said. "A year ago, the DEA was
running its Oxycontin campaign full-tilt and trying to evolve it
into a full-blown prescription drug abuse crisis, but now they are
running into significant opposition. The war on prescription drug
abuse kills pain patients and is an invasion of privacy on an
unprecedented level, but the pain patients are organizing now and
they'll be addressing these issues more forcefully in the future."

This news article came from:
Drug War Chronicle #310 - November 10, 2003
A Publication of the Drug Reform Coordination Network
(formerly The Week Online with DRCNet)

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