Law Commons^™

Old Age As The Hidden Sentencing Factor, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Imagine two doctors who illegally sold opioids in exchange for cash. Both doctors sold roughly the same quantity of pills, had no prior criminal convictions, and accordingly faced the same sentencing guidelines range. The major difference was that one doctor was in his sixties and considerably older than the other doctor. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines provide that judges should consider a defendant's age only in atypical cases. Yet, this Article demonstrates that older defendants received sentencing discounts far more often than younger defendants convicted of the same crime.

This Article gathers sentencing data for almost 130 doctors convicted in federal …

The Opioid Doctors: Is Losing Your License A Sufficient Penalty For Dealing Drugs?, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Imagine that a medical board revokes a doctor's license both because he has been peddling thousands of pills of opioids and also because he was caught with a few grams of cocaine. The doctor is a family physician, not a pain management specialist. Yet, during a one-year period he wrote more than 4,000 prescriptions for opioids--roughly eighteen scripts per day. Patients came from multiple states and from hundreds of miles away to get oxycodone prescriptions. And the doctor prescribed large quantities of opioids--up to 240 pills per month--to patients with no record of previously needing narcotic painkillers. Both federal and …

Punishing Pill Mill Doctors: Sentencing Disparities In The Opioid Epidemic, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Consider two pill mill doctors who flooded the streets with oxycodone and other dangerous opioids. The evidence against both doctors was overwhelming. They each sold millions of opioid pills. Both doctors charged addicted patients hundreds of dollars in cash for office visits that involved no physical examinations and no diagnostic tests. Instead, the doctors simply handed the patients opioids in exchange for cash. To maximize their income, both doctors conspired with street dealers to import fake patients — many of them homeless — so that the doctors could write even more prescriptions. Both doctors made millions of dollars profiting off …

Physician Participation In Executions, The Morality Of Capital Punishment, And The Practical Implications Of Their Relationship, Paul J. Litton

Faculty Publications

Evidence that some executed prisoners suffered excruciating pain has reinvigorated the ethical debate about physician participation in lethal injections. In widely publicized litigation, death row inmates argue that the participation of anesthesiologists in their execution is constitutionally required to minimize the risk of unnecessary suffering. For many years, commentators supported the ethical ban on physician participation reflected in codes of professional medical organizations. However, a recent wave of scholarship concurs with inmate advocates, urging the law to require or at least permit physician participation.