PHYSICIAN CONVICTED OF ILLEGALLY PRESCRIBING PAINKILLERS

ABINGDON -- After 16 hours of deliberations over three days, a federal jury
found a Bland County physician guilty Tuesday of 266 counts of illegally
prescribing narcotic painkillers, including OxyContin. Dr. Freeman Lowell
Clark, 43, displayed no emotion as the judge read the verdicts, but his
family and friends gasped in disbelief. After court adjourned, Clark calmly
hugged his family and kissed his fiancee, Mary Sivert, before federal
marshals led him from the courtroom. Clark could face up to 15 years in
prison when sentenced later this year, prosecutors said. Defense attorneys
argued against jailing Clark until sentencing, but Assistant U.S. Attorney
Randy Ramseyer said federal bond law requires drug offenders to be held in
custody.

The judge agreed. "The law seems to be pretty clear on this," Ramseyer
said. "Dr. Clark would have to be detained." The verdicts came on the 10th
day of trial for Clark, who had been charged with 296 counts of
distributing controlled drugs -- including OxyContin, Percocet, Tylox,
Lortab and Lorcet -- without a legitimate medical purpose. The jury
acquitted him of 30 of the counts.

Prosecutors portrayed Clark as a "drug dealer in a suit," but defense
attorneys said he merely was a good-hearted doctor who wanted to end his
patients' suffering. Defense attorneys hinted after the trial that they
might appeal the verdicts. "I'm sure there will be post-trial motions to be
filed," said attorney Robert Vinyard. Clark is the fifth Southwest Virginia
doctor to be convicted in recent months of illegally prescribing narcotics.

In May, a federal jury convicted Grundy physician Franklin J. Sutherland on
similar charges. More than a third of the counts against Clark involved
OxyContin, which has been linked to more than 120 overdose deaths
nationwide. Abuse of the drug has reached epidemic levels in the region,
and more than three dozen Southwest Virginians have died of overdoses,
authorities have said. Clark's offenses occurred between 1999 and 2000 at
his clinic, which first was in Bluefield and later moved to Wytheville,
then Bland. During the two-week trial, former patients testified that they
had been abusing the narcotic pills Clark prescribed, crushing and snorting
or injecting them to achieve an intense euphoria. Several witnesses said
they were longtime drug abusers before ever meeting Clark, and others said
they first became addicts when Clark prescribed powerful narcotics for
their pain. Some patients said they were getting narcotics from several
doctors at the same time they were seeing Clark, and others said Clark knew
they were addicted and did nothing to help. Clark himself testified that he
struggled with substance abuse and was being monitored by the Virginia
Board of Medicine at the time the offenses occurred. The doctor was being
held Tuesday night in the Washington County Jail pending a sentencing
hearing, which U.S. District Judge James Jones set for Oct. 16.