JURY IN PRESCRIPTIONS TRIAL BEGINS MULLING DOCTOR'S FATE

ABINGDON -- A federal jury began deliberating Friday afternoon in the case
of a Bland County doctor accused of illegally prescribing narcotic
painkillers hundreds of times to drug-addicted patients.

The jury had been considering the evidence for less than two hours when
U.S. District Judge James Jones adjourned court for the day and ordered the
panel to return Monday morning.

During the nearly two-week trial, Dr. Freeman Lowell Clark contended he was
trying to ease his patients' chronic pain when he prescribed the narcotics,
but prosecutors portrayed him as a well-dressed drug dealer.

"With all the telltale signs that his patients were abusing drugs, he
didn't care," Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Ramseyer told jurors in closing
arguments Friday. "A drug dealer in a suit is no different than a drug
dealer in rags."

But defense attorney Robert Rider said Clark had "tried to bring pain
management to chronic pain sufferers and do it with dedication."

"You don't blame and you don't convict a dedicated doctor whose whole
purpose is to relieve people of pain," Rider said.

It was the eighth day of trial for Clark, 43, charged with 298 counts of
illegally prescribing narcotic painkillers without a legitimate medical
purpose. More than a third of the counts involve morphine-like 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 alleged offenses occurred between 1999 and 2000 at his clinic,
which first was in Bluefield and later moved to Wytheville, then Bland.
Former patients testified during the trial that they had been abusing the
narcotic pills Clark prescribed, crushing and snorting or injecting them to
achieve an intense euphoria. Some said they were longtime drug abusers when
they began seeing Clark, and others said they first became addicted when
Clark prescribed powerful narcotics for their back, neck, leg or other pain.

A few witnesses testified they were getting hydrocodone and oxycodone pills
from several doctors at the same time they were seeing Clark, and some said
Clark knew they and other patients were addicted but did nothing to help.

Dr. Mitchell Max, a researcher in clinical pharmacology for the U.S. Public
Health Service, testified as an expert witness for the defense and said he
believed Clark's prescription-writing had been legitimate.

"Dr. Clark has shown a level of thinking and knowledge and ability that
must be better than (most) of the general practitioners I've seen," Max
said Friday. He said it was the doctor's place to establish trust and treat
the pain of his patients, not to be suspicious of every complaint. "We want
our doctors to trust people and we want our policemen and regulators to
mistrust people," Max said.

Earlier, Dr. Adam Steinberg, an Abingdon internist and expert prosecution
witness, said Clark's patients showed telltale signs of drug abuse and
addiction.

He said Clark's prescriptions of narcotics had been excessive and
unwarranted in most cases. Rider, the defense attorney, dismissed
prosecutors' allegations that Clark had been feeding patients' addictions
to keep them coming back. "You've already heard this doctor wasn't making
any money," Rider said. "He underbilled by a third.

If he wasn't sincere and doing it in good faith, why did he bother?" But
the prosecution said Clark purposefully had been blind to his patients'
drug problems. "There's evidence (he) knew exactly what was going on,"
Ramseyer said. "What Dr. Freeman Clark has done is wrong.

It's wrong and it's illegal, and there has to be a consequence." If
convicted, the doctor faces a maximum sentence of hundreds of years in
prison and millions of dollars in fines.