Pubdate: Sat, 05 Mar 2005
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Copyright: 2005 PG Publishing
Contact:  http://www.post-gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/341
Author: Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/oxycontin.htm (Oxycontin/Oxycodone)

CONVICTED PHYSICIAN SEEKING NEW TRIAL IN SEX-FOR-PILLS CASE

Doctor Convicted Of Trading Drugs For Sex In Oakmont Examination Room

Dr. Bernard Rottschaefer, a doctor convicted of giving drugs to
addicts in exchange for sex in his Oakmont examination room, has
insisted all along that the women who testified against him were lying.

Now he says he has evidence in writing that at least one of them was.
And if he wins the new trial he wants, he'll have the woman's jilted
lover to thank.

Rottschaefer's attorneys have received 183 love letters that one of
the government's chief witnesses, Jennifer Riggle, 27, wrote to her
boyfriend, Barron Shelton, from Aug. 13, 2001, to Feb. 3, 2004, while
he was in prison.

In some of them, Riggle stated plainly that she planned to lie to the
grand jury and at trial by saying she had sex with Rottschaefer. She
hoped her testimony would get her a reduced sentence for selling
OxyContin, a narcotic pain reliever.

She ended up with five years of probation in a plea bargain with the
U.S. attorney's office.

Shelton turned the letters over to the doctor's attorneys Nov. 10, two
days after he got out of prison, apparently because Riggle had taken
up with another man while he was behind bars.

Neither Shelton nor Riggle, both of New Kensington, could be reached
last week.

But one of Rottschaefer's attorneys, Irving Green, said Shelton's
motive was to get back at Riggle for betraying him by showing she was
a liar. Shelton also told Green's partner, John Ceraso, that he had
followed the Rottschaefer case in the newspaper and didn't want to see
a man go to prison for something he didn't do.

Either way, the letters were certainly welcomed by Rottschaefer's
legal team in its efforts to keep him out of jail.

"We never knew anything about these letters," said Green, the trial
attorney. "I've been practicing law for a long time, and I've never
seen anything like this."

The correspondence is part of a motion for a new trial and an appeal
by Eli Stutsman, a Portland, Ore., lawyer who defends doctors
investigated by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for writing
illegal painkiller prescriptions.

The legal team recently suffered a setback, but they say this battle
is only beginning.

On Jan. 11, U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster ruled that the Riggle
letters weren't grounds for a new trial because the jury heard a
defense witness say that Riggle told her that she lied. Riggle made
the admission while the two were in jail in Westmoreland County.

Under the law, the new evidence is considered merely "cumulative," the
judge said. Lancaster said the letters were not given under oath, so
they can be used "for impeachment purposes only, not for their substance."

In other words, they don't count as justification for a new
trial.

But Green, Ceraso and Stutsman say they should.

"I think the issue is one of fundamental fairness," Green
said.

The lawyers have appealed Lancaster's ruling to the 3rd U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals. Stutsman has also appealed the conviction itself,
essentially arguing that the government improperly pursued criminal
charges when the case is, at best, a medical malpractice claim.

The U.S. attorney's office is preparing a response, which is due by
the end of March.

Prosecutors aren't allowed to comment on their strategy. But they are
expected to argue that Riggle lied in the letters, not on the stand,
because she didn't want Shelton to think she was having sex with
someone else.

In one letter, she addresses that suspicion directly.

"Honey," she wrote Nov. 14, 2002, "I hope you believe that I didn't do
anything with that doctor cause I didn't."

Green acknowledged that possibility and said prosecutors are likely to
suggest it in their appellate briefs.

The lawyer who handled Riggle's plea bargain, federal public defender
Penn Hackney, said he couldn't comment.

Sex And Drugs

After a high-profile trial in U.S. District Court in 2003,
Rottschaefer, 62, of New Kensington, was found guilty of 153 counts of
illegally prescribing painkillers to female addicts, often in exchange
for oral sex. He was acquitted on 55 other counts.

In September, Lancaster sentenced him to 6 1/2 years in federal
prison, but stayed the sentence pending the appeals.

At the trial, Rottschaefer testified in his own defense that he didn't
realize his patients were drug addicts and denied he had sex with any
of them.

The women all testified that they had sex with him behind the locked
door of his exam room, and Rottschaefer's former medical assistant,
Diane Wisniewski, said she knew he was having sex with his "little
playmates and druggies."

She had informed on him to DEA from 2000 until he fired her in August
2003.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Houghton also presented medical files
showing Rottschaefer had made no attempt to diagnose or treat the
women for their medical complaints other than to write more
prescriptions.

The women said they returned to the doctor again and again, telling
repeated tales of losing their prescriptions, and each time he wrote
them new ones.

Riggle testified that she first visited the doctor in the spring of
2001 on the advice of another addict, Pammy Miller.

After a few visits, she said, he began fondling her breasts.
Eventually, she said, he propositioned her by saying: "You satisfy my
needs and I'll satisfy yours."

She said she performed oral sex. Afterward, he wrote prescriptions for
OxyContin and Xanax.

Three other women -- Miller, Amy Vivio and Sue Ann Leskovic -- told
similar tales. A fifth, Corey Schlemmer, said she got drugs from
Rottschaefer but didn't have sex with him.

According to Rottschaefer's attorneys, Riggle's cooperation resulted
in the dismissal of state charges of selling OxyContin.

She later pleaded guilty in federal court to delivery of the drug and
agreed to cooperate against Rottschaefer. In a standard plea letter,
signed by U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, prosecutors said if she
didn't tell the truth, her plea would still stand but the government
would not be obligated to request a lenient sentence for her.

"The government may also prosecute Jennifer Riggle for perjury or
obstruction of justice," Buchanan wrote.

In May, Buchanan's office filed a motion to reward Riggle for
"substantial assistance" against Rottschaefer.

"The defendant was fully cooperative and appeared to be truthful and
candid," wrote Houghton, the prosecutor. "The defendant's cooperation
significantly strengthened the government's case against Dr. Bernard
Rottschaefer."

Lies And Letters

One curious aspect of the case is that while the government's
investigation is built on the drugs-for-sex allegations, prosecutors
said they didn't have to prove Rottschaefer was having sex with anyone.

In court filings and in front of the judge, Houghton said the
government had to prove only that Rottschaefer was illegally providing
prescriptions for no medical purpose. The drugs-for-sex scenario was
the legal "theory" of the case Houghton used to show motive, so it was
necessary for her to present the lurid details to the jury.

At the time, though, no one knew anything about Riggle's letters to
her boyfriend, many of which she wrote from jail.

In 20 of them, according to Rottschaefer's attorneys, she admits to
planning perjury or carrying it out.

"They're saying he was bribing patients with sex for pills, but it
never happened to me," she wrote in a Sept. 2, 2002, letter. "DEA said
they will cut my time for a good testimony."

Shelton has given a sworn statement that the letters, all handwritten,
are authentic. He also included the envelopes, stamped with dates, to
prove they weren't written after the fact.

"During the time I was in prison," he wrote, "Ms. Riggle confirmed to
me in writing that she was planning on testifying falsely during Dr.
Rottschaefer's trial. Ms. Riggle wrote to me that she did not exchange
sex for drugs with Dr. Rottschaefer and was only testifying to trading
sex for drugs because she did not want to serve time in prison."

Shelton said he tried to persuade her not to lie, but "she wrote to me
that Dr. Rottschaefer was a bad doctor and that the other patients
were going to testify against him anyway."

Riggle, whom prosecutors said had suffered a near-fatal overdose March
9, 2002, because of Rottschaefer, said she wanted to get out of jail
so she could be with Shelton and her young daughter, Casey.

She was released in summer 2003, according to Rottschaefer's
attorneys, but by the fall, her relationship with Shelton was on the
rocks. In her last letter to him Feb. 3, 2004, she said she had become
involved with another man, Dave Cook.

Nine months later, Shelton got out of prison, apparently intent on
revenge. He called Ceraso, whom he knew, and promptly delivered the
letters.

In addition to Riggle, the defense says, the other women who said they
were having sex with Rottschaefer conspired to lie because all were in
trouble with the law and wanted to cut deals of one kind or another.

"Once the story was set in place," Green wrote, "each woman had an
opportunity to use the system to obtain a lighter sentence by
committing perjury."

What's more, Green said, they all knew each other from the streets.
The only one who wasn't in the clique was Schlemmer, who was also the
one who said she didn't have sex.

The other four, Rottschaefer's attorneys say, simply told DEA and
federal prosecutors what they wanted to hear.

"The government," Green said, "created the perfect storm to convict
Dr. Rottschaefer."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin