RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Virginia doctor who was sentenced to 40 years in prison after prescribing more than half a million doses of highly addictive opioids in two years has been granted a new trial by a federal appeals court that found the instructions given to jurors at his trial misstated the law.
Joel Smithers was convicted in 2019 of more than 800 counts of illegally prescribing drugs.
During his trial, prosecutors said patients from five states drove hundreds of miles to see him to get prescriptions for oxycodone, fentanyl and other powerful painkillers. Authorities said Smithers headed a drug distribution ring that contributed to the opioid abuse crisis in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
In a ruling issued Friday, a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Smithers’ convictions and ordered a new trial.
Jurors at Smithers’ trial were instructed that in order to find Smithers guilty of illegally prescribing drugs, they must find that he did so “without a legitimate medical purpose or beyond the bounds of medical practice.”