The case against Dr. Bernard Rottschaefer grows yet more outrageous. Rottschaefer, remember, is the Pennsylvania doctor convicted of trading painkiller prescriptions for oral sex. His conviction was recently upheld, even after the prosecution’s star witness admitted in letters to her boyfriend that she had made up the drugs-for-sex stories in exchange for leniency with respect to her own drug charges.

We’re now learning that there are significant problems with the other witnesses, too. From the Pittsburgh City Paper:

Dr. Bernard Rottschaefer, a Plum physician convicted in 2004 of prescribing powerful narcotics to former patients in exchange for sex, is once again seeking a new trial. This time, he’s relying on evidence from a surprising source: testimony by the patients who got him locked up — and are now suing him in a civil case.

Specifically, some of the witnesses have now testified in their civil case against Rottschaefer that they did indeed have medical ailments that caused them pain, and weren’t engaging in a knowing drugs-for-sex exchange with him.

“The fact that each and every one of the five complaining witnesses has, since Dr. Rottschaefer’s prosecution, given sworn civil deposition testimony that reveals her prosecution testimony to be false and misleading, is extraordinary,” Stutsman’s court motion asserts. “The false testimony went to the heart of the case: whether the prescriptions were issued for medical treatment or as drug dealing.

“The question in this prosecution was not whether the defendant distributed controlled substances, for Dr. Rottschaefer did; it is whether Dr. Rottschaefer distributed the controlled substances in the course of medical practice,” the brief concludes. “If he did, there is no crime. If he abandoned the practice of medicine and acted instead as a mere drug dealer, then the distributions were criminal.”

If you ask me, the most interesting part of the article comes here:

U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan declined comment on the motion through her spokeswoman.

Buchanan’s a politically ambitious media hound. Previously, she has vigorously defended her persecution of this doctor, even after her star witness confessed to perjury.

Her silence is conspicuous. We’ll see.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 3:55 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Pain Treatment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.