MURPHY PROSECUTORS DENY ILL MOTIVES

The prosecution was damned if it did or damned if it didn't.

"It was a no-win situation" for the prosecution, Jim Townsend, the county's
chief criminal deputy prosecutor, said Tuesday.

Townsend explained that his office would have looked bad either way if it
had filed felony charges against Snohomish County Sheriff Patrick Murphy
before or after polls opened for the 1995 election.

So Townsend's office charged Murphy with fraudulently seeking prescriptions
for controlled drugs less than a week before the general election.

Murphy, a Democrat, lost his bid for sheriff to Republican Rick Bart. The
charges against Murphy were later dropped when a Jefferson County judge
ruled that the evidence against him had been improperly obtained without a
search warrant.

After the loss, Murphy claimed he was the victim of a politically motivated
investigation by the prosecutor's office. But Townsend said Tuesday his
office didn't plan to disrupt the election by filing the charges just days
before.

In fact, Becky Roe, a special prosecutor hired for the case, knew Oct. 3 --
about a month before the election -- that she would charge Murphy.

"If the public learned (about the charges) after the election, they would
have thought it was a different kind of political fix," Townsend said. "My
advice was to forget about the politics and do what's right about the case."

Townsend, a Democrat, also said he hadn't contributed money to Murphy's
campaign because Murphy never asked him for any.

Townsend's testimony came in the third week of the Superior Court civil
trial. Murphy is suing the Pharmacy Board for allegedly conspiring to
disclose the ex-sheriff's confidential prescription information to
Snohomish County Executive Bob Drewel and others. Murphy is seeking up to
$10 million in damages.

The board acted on the complaint of pharmacists who questioned the number
of prescriptions written out to Murphy. The ex-sheriff had a chronic jaw
disorder sustained in 1988. He also suffered a series of separate
accidents, including broken ribs from a bicycle mishap and a herniated disc
from a fall in Alaska, according to court testimony.

The board surveyed area pharmacies and found that Murphy had more than 260
prescriptions filled in 17 months. Investigators were concerned about the
amount of medication as well as the type.

Murphy was receiving muscle relaxants and narcotic painkillers such as
Vicodin ES and Percocet, sometimes as many as 12 pills a day.

Pharmacist Claire Capriola testified Tuesday that she called Murphy's two
dentists and his doctor in April 1993 when she became concerned that he was
"taking lots of similar medications" -- basically painkillers, she said.

Capriola said that she called the pharmacy board in April 1995. She was
seeking advice after Murphy asked her if he irritated her. Murphy asked
Capriola that question after she had asked him to sign an insurance log
verifying he had picked up his blood pressure medication.

"I felt I was being put on the spot," Capriola said, adding she never told
the pharmacy board that Murphy had threatened her or was abusive.