Cheyenne Witt tragically died of a morphine overdose after Appellant Jay Sadrinia, her dentist, prescribed her morphine twice in three days, leading her to have almost triple the fatal amount in her blood. A federal grand jury subsequently charged Sadrinia with four counts of illegally distributing controlled substances to Witt without a legitimate medical purpose in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and one count of illegally distributing morphine to her resulting her death in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C).
Just twelve days before Sadrinia's trial, the Government filed a notice of "inextricably intertwined and/or Rule 404(b) evidence." Specifically, the Government indicated it intended to introduce testimony from several of his former employees about some of his prior "bad acts," including testimony that he once used another dentist's prescription pad to prescribe opioids while the dentist was out of the office. Although the District Court ruled that the Government's notice was untimely, it ultimately allowed the Government to present testimony from the same former employees during Sadrinia's trial, over his objection. Such evidence included testimony from: (a) Sadrinia's former assistant that he used foul language when he fired her and after she had threatened to report him for malpractice; (b) one of Sadrinia's former colleagues that he had used her prescription pad while she was outside the United States; and (c) his former officer manager that he had used the same colleague's prescription pad and that, when she quit, she warned him he would "kill someone." The District Court overruled Sadrinia's objection, finding that such testimony was "intrinsic" evidence of the crimes charged relevant to his "knowledge and intent." In addition, it did not provide a limiting instruction to the jury for such evidence.
The jury subsequently acquitted Sadrinia on Counts One through Three, but convicted him on Count Four (the initial morphine prescription) and Count 5 (the two morphine prescriptions that resulted in Witt's death. The District Court denied Sadrinia's motion for acquittal or a new trial and sentenced him to 240 months' imprisonment - the mandatory minimum.
On appeal, Sadrinia challenged the sufficiency of the evidence against him, and he alleged the District Court erred in overruling his objection to the introduction of the referenced prior bad acts evidence. In a published opinion, the Sixth Circuit held that the Government presented sufficient evidence to support his convictions on both counts. Citing Sadrinia's 30 years of experience in dentistry, expert testimony that the amount of morphine he prescribed was rarely, if ever, appropriate for pain management in dental patients, and that his prescriptions exceeded the amount permitted by Kentucky regulations, the Court held that a rational jury could have concluded that Sadrinia knew the last prescription he wrote for Witt lacked a legitimate medical purpose.
Although it found the evidence sufficient to support his convictions, the Court reversed them and remanded his case for a new trial. In doing so, it held that the District Court abused its discretion in admitting intrinsic evidence testimony from his former colleague and employees. It held that, regardless of whether such evidence was relevant, it was not "intrinsically intertwined" with Sadrinia's actions because they were too temporally removed from Witt's death.
The Court also rejected the Government's argument that the District Court's error was harmless. It noted that the evidence was not sufficiently "overwhelming" to overcome the error and that the District Court failed to provide a limiting instruction. Additionally, it held that the Government's use of such testimony in its closing arguments only made the error more prejudicial.
FRE 404(b) evidence always poses a risk to the fairness of a defendant's trial. In this case, the Sixth Circuit found that such evidence went too far.
2 comments:
There were many important details left out, such as the fact that the patient was a daily drug user and heroin addict and that she lied about this on her patient intake form to the doctor, that she had written a suicide note to her family members weeks before the incident, and that she had taken the entire bottle, as opposed to the legal amount per the prescription instructions, and due to her taking the entire bottle (after she had a fight with one of her boyfriends) in one night leading to her death. they also left out the part that she kept coming back to the doctor saying she was in pain and asking for more drugs, and that once the doctor suspected abuse of the drugs, he stopped prescribing her any narcotics. It was also left out that the patient, barely a 25 year old, had to have an extensive oral surgery that lasted 8 hours - more than the common oral surgery - which may have necessitated stronger pain medicine, especially due to the patient's own requests for more medicine due to ongoing excruciating pain.
the evidence implied the the girl was selling her drugs and buying street drugs. one of her sugar daddies was in possession of the drugs and would dispense them to her "as needed" god knows what he did with them or if the drugs she took were actually the ones from the pharmacy or from the street. i also read somewhere that the photos showed she had track marks on her feet, obviously she lied to the doctor about her drug use on forms and in person. and her family and friends were going in and out of the house for days while she was dead before the cops even came...they tried to "clean up" the scene and took her drugs and laptop and whatnot....completely destroyed evidence. it was like they were trying to set up the doctor. Super weird that one of her sugar daddies set up cameras all around the house that her OTHER sugar daddy bought or rented out for her...!!
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