LOS ANGELES A Southern California doctor was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison on Friday for over-prescribing drugs that caused the fatal overdose of three patients in a murder case capped by the first conviction of its kind in the United States.
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A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury in October convicted Tseng, who specialized in internal medicine, of three counts of second-degree murder in a case prosecutors said showed she put greed above patients’ wellbeing.
Ogle’s mother, Desiree Ogle-Spillman, told reporters that she felt Tseng didn’t take responsibility for her actions.
“I can not imagine what you have gone through”, the bespectacled Tseng said in a soft voice. “I have been and forever will be praying for you”.
Prosecutors said that Tseng failed to keep thorough records on the patients who had died, and ignored the pleas of family members who demanded that she stop prescribing drugs to their loved ones.
Attorney Peter Osinoff, who represented Tseng before the state medical board, told the judge during Friday’s hearing that the doctor no longer represents a danger to society since she surrendered her medical license in 2012.
There has been a steady stream of such cases around the country in recent years. He told the judge that primary care physicians are declining to treat chronic pain patients. Between 2007 and 2010 authorities said she prescribed drugs that included oxycodone, methadone, Xanax, roxicodone without valid medical reason. The problem is an oft-mentioned theme by presidential candidates from both parties, and the White House this week proposed $1.1 billion in new funding to combat the problem.
Tseng prescribed powerful painkillers to her patients, including oxycodone – commonly sold under the brand name Percocet – and hydrocodone, more commonly known by its brand name Vicodin. But, he added, any doctor who is prescribing pills knowing that they are being abused or diverted shouldn’t be called a doctor.
Tseng was convicted October 30 of three counts of second-degree murder, 19 counts of unlawful controlled substance prescription and one count of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud.
Minutes before she was sentenced, Tseng apologized in court to the families of her dead patients and others who became addicted to prescription drugs under her care. Not only are more people abusing heroin, they are also more likely to be using, and abusing, prescription drugs at the same time, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Tseng’s clinic was allegedly notorious for how easy it was to receive prescriptions. Stavron made a two-hour round trip from his parents’ home in San Clemente. Over the course of three years, Tseng would write over 27,000 prescriptions – 25 a day, according to CBS.
“There were no true mitigating factors in this case”.
“One doctor can turn a whole town upside down”, he said. She viewed Tseng’s statement as a desperate move. The defense said the patients who overdosed lied to get prescriptions. She wrote them without performing meaningful medical exams and despite there being no medical necessity for the drugs.
Her husband, Gene Tu, was also a doctor.
Tseng was charged in the deaths of Joey Rovero, 21, Steven Ogle, 25, and Vu Nguyen, 28.
He ordered Tseng to pay $10,000 in restitution and a little over $5,000 to April Rovero, the mother of one victim.
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The judge rejected the defense’s request to sentence Tseng to the minimum 15-year-to-life term, saying that the punishment has to fit her conduct.
