LIMBAUGH SEIZES ON MIAMI-DADE COURT RULING

Rush Limbaugh took a moment Thursday on his radio show to talk about a
Miami-Dade County man's murder conviction overturned this week by an
appeals court that ruled police illegally seized his medical records.

Limbaugh, 53, a Palm Beach resident, is locked in a battle with Palm
Beach County prosecutors over their seizure of his medical records
from four doctors late last year. Limbaugh is under investigation for
possible violations of the state's "doctor shopping" law that makes it
illegal to obtain overlapping prescriptions secretly from more than
one doctor.

He has not been charged, and Limbaugh's battle over his medical
records is now with the Fourth District Court of Appeals in West Palm
Beach. He is appealing a judge's ruling that allowed prosecutors to
seize the records with search warrants rather than following a
procedure in state law that requires that patients be notified before
the records are subpoenaed, so the issue can be contested in court.

Limbaugh's Miami attorney Roy Black filed a notice with the appeals
court Thursday alerting the judges that their counterparts in Miami-
Dade issued an opinion Wednesday touching on some of the issues raised
in Limbaugh's appeal.

In the Miami-Dade case, Timothy Sneed was convicted of second-degree
murder after a struggle with a man who pulled a gun. Both men were
shot, the other man fatally.

The next day, Sneed went to a hospital, and a police detective
obtained his medical records without a subpoena or a search warrant.
The detective later said he was not aware of the notification
requirement.

The Miami-Dade appeals court ruled that the detective illegally
obtained Sneed's records, so the court overturned Sneed's conviction
and ruled prosecutors can't use the records if they retry Sneed.

"The court, in this case -- we're not talking something as innocuous
and unprovable and silly as doctor shopping -- the Third District
Court reversed a second-degree murder conviction on this," Limbaugh
said. "They reversed a second-degree murder conviction and a 35-year
prison sentence because of the illegal seizure and failure to follow
the statute on securing these medical records done by the cop, and
they ordered a retrial without the records available to the state
attorney, which is exactly what we have demanded and suggested in our
brief."