GRAVES: JURY DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE CASE

Dr. James Graves recently was convicted on charges of manslaughter,
racketeering and unlawful delivery of a controlled substance in connection
with illegally prescribing the powerful drug OxyContin.

He will face sentencing on March 22 and could go to prison for up to 165 years.

News Journal reporter Monica Scandlen and Santa Rosa County Editor Tom
Ninestine interviewed Graves on Thursday at Santa Rosa County Jail:

Q: You don't agree with the verdict. In your opinion, what didn't the jury
understand about your side of the case?

A: Obviously they didn't understand what the case was all about. The case
was about whether or not in the case of these four manslaughter cases, the
medications that I prescribed to the patients actually was the proximate
cause of their death.

In order to determine that, I would have had to look at those patients'
charts and looked at the evidence and looked at the case and gone through
those materials for days to make up my mind. I was totally shocked. It says
to me these people had absolutely made up their minds before they ever went
into that room to begin their deliberations.

Q: What is the core of a doctor-patient relationship?

A: When a patient comes to see you, and they're not a perfect person, you
have to make a decision: Am I going to make a commitment and stick with
this patient and provide the care they need, or am I simply going to
dismiss them?

That was a hard decision to make with some of my patients because they
didn't have medical insurance. They really didn't have other people they
could go to in the community.

That's what I did. I did it to the best of my ability.

Q: There was some testimony that your waiting room was like a Grateful Dead
concert.

A: I wish. I like the Grateful Dead. I wish my waiting room was like that.
It was full of lots of patients. It wasn't unusual.

Q: Some people are asking, "Why does that doctor get free lawyers?"

A: Because all that doctor's funds were tied up in bond. (Graves' original
$500,000 bond was reduced to $75,000). I hired some attorneys before these
guys ever came on the scene. (Graves has two court-appointed, private
attorneys.)

I didn't have a lot of cash on hand. I started two new medical practices.
Buy equipment for them. Paid for full-time employees. My wife and I have
never been the kind of people who horde money. We have enough to provide
for our own living and our children's education. But beyond that, we give
to the church.

Q: You spent three days on the witness stand. Is there anything that didn't
come out that you would like people to know?

A: I had a very long, and I feel, good career in the Navy. Was actually the
senior medical person on scene for the first several weeks of the Gulf War
and the senior medical officer on the USS Independence at the time.

Also, I've had a long-going and deep commitment to doing volunteer medical
missions work overseas. I've done it in Ghana, in Jordan in the Middle
East. I've done it in Haiti. I've done it in India. And I was on my way to
do it in Kenya before this went down.

We'd been looking at another physician to come in and a couple of nurse
practitioners. I'd worked so hard getting this practice started that I
hoped to be able to take a little time off and go do some of that.

Q: Why were you drawn to the medical profession?

A: It came out during trial that in the small town in Kentucky I grew up
in, I had a hero. He was Dr. Roberts. Dr. Roberts went around and made
house calls. When he came home from his office at night, sometimes he'd see
as many as 30 to 50 patients on his front porch.

Q: Was a criminal court the place to resolve this?

A: This should never have been a matter of criminal record. If there had
been a problem with my practice, someone should have come to me early on
and said, "Dr. Graves, it looks like there's a problem with several of your
patients, or the way you're prescribing medications." I would have loved
it. I would have changed whatever is necessary to do.