United States Tenth Circuit

In a prosecution against pharmacy employees for dispensing unlawful controlled substances, one defendant's conviction is affirmed where: 1) Gonzales v. Oregon did not apply because there was no interpretive rule seeking to define a practice as lacking any legitimate medical purpose; and 2) the government adduced sufficient proof at trial that defendant's practices were not within the usual course of professional pharmaceutical practice. However, another defendant's conviction is reversed where there was no evidence that he knew the pharmacy's managers and pharmacists filled prescriptions issued without a legitimate medical purpose or in defiance of professional standards.

Appellate Information

• Decided 09/09/2009
• Published 09/09/2009

Judges

• GORSUCH, Circuit Judge., Before TACHA, O'BRIEN, and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Tenth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• Lee Thompson, Thompson Law Firm, LLC, Wichita, KS, for Defendant-Appellant Jerry L. Lovern., Timothy J. Henry, Assistant Federal Public Defender, Wichita, KS, for Defendant-Appellant Robert J. Barron., Mona Lee M. Furst, Assistant United States Attorney (Marietta Parker, Acting United States Attorney, with her on the briefs), for Plaintiff-Appellee United States in Case Nos. 08-3141, 08-3149.