The Supreme Court sided Monday with a pair of doctors facing long prison terms for aggressively prescribing pain pills in a case that could make prosecutors think twice about how they prosecute doctors amid the opioid epidemic.
In a unanimous decision, the court told the federal appeals court to take a second look at the convictions because juries were unable to consider the doctors’ “good-faith” defense, or that they were prescribing pain pills because they legitimately thought their patients needed them.
The Controlled Dangerous Substances Act of 1970 requires prosecutors to prove the doctors knew they were distributing drugs illegally.