CLINIC DOCTOR CONVICTED OF PRESCRIBING ILLEGALLY

20-Year Sentence Recommended For Fortune Williams

VANCEBURG - A Lewis County jury last night convicted Dr. Fortune Williams
of unlawfully prescribing controlled substances at a small rural clinic in
Eastern Kentucky.

The panel of seven women and five men deliberated more than three hours,
after six days of testimony, and recommended a 20-year sentence.

Williams, dressed in a black suit, stood expressionless beside his attorney
as Judge Lewis Nicholls read the verdict.

Nicholls set formal sentencing for April 4.

Attorney Bryan Underwood, a Maysville public defender, asked for leniency
because Williams had no previous criminal record.

"This might be the first time in Kentucky where a doctor has gone to trial
and not just laid down and cooked a deal," Underwood said.

"I realize Eastern Kentucky has a drug-prescription problem," he said, "and
recently authorities have come down hard on physicians like Dr. Williams."

After the trial, Underwood said he would appeal.

Williams, 54, a California pediatrician who was hired to work at a small
clinic at Garrison in Lewis County from Dec. 1, 2000, to Oct. 30, 2001, was
charged with four counts of illegally prescribing a controlled substance
last April by a Lewis County grand jury.

He has been lodged in Lewis County Jail since last August when he was taken
into custody after returning from Jamaica.

"I don't think it's unreasonable to infer that when he got placed in an
Eastern Kentucky clinic, he got in over his head," Underwood told the jury
before it decided Williams' sentence.

Lewis Commonwealth's Attorney Clifford Duvall reminded the jury that
Williams will receive credit for time served in jail and will be eligible
for parole after serving 20 percent of his sentence.

He urged consecutive sentences for the Class D felonies, each of which
carries sentences of one to five years in prison.

Duvall suggested Williams had lowered himself to being a street-level drug
dealer "and needs to be treated like that."

Although prosecutors based much of their case on an expert's evaluation of
35 sample case files, the four charges stemmed from two prescriptions
Williams wrote on Aug. 7, 2001, and Sept. 5, 2001, to Phyllis Jean
Brothers, 36, of Lewis County.

Williams, who has been held in Lewis County Jail under a $10,000 cash bond
since August, sat alone in the courtroom at 6:30 p.m., awaiting a verdict.

Williams did not testify during the trial. Underwood said Friday he did not
plan to call any witnesses, but told Circuit Judge Lewis Nicholls yesterday
morning that he changed his mind over the weekend.

Underwood put four witnesses on the stand, including a former Williams
patient and three former employees at 1st Care clinic at Garrison, about
halfway between Vanceburg and South Shore on the AA Highway.

Prosecutors claimed at least 4,000 patients--- many of them younger drug
abusers from Ohio -- swarmed to the clinic inside a former grocery store.
Prosecutors also calculated the small clinic in a town of 800 people was
taking in up to $14,000 a day in cash.

Former patient Ollie Bertram, 56, of Greenup County, yesterday praised
Williams as a concerned doctor who referred her to other physicians for
treatment. But she conceded under cross examination that she and her two
sons had received the same combination of pain pills and other medication.

Rebecca Zornes of West Portsmouth, Ohio, said she and four or five other
employees at the Garrison clinic, including part-owner Nancy Sadler, had
previously work at a South Shore clinic owned by Dr. David Procter.

"Some of the patients did come from over there because they really liked
Dr. Williams," said Zornes, who said Procter's clinic at the time had had a
succession of "locum tenens," or temporary, doctors.

"They (patients) were sick and tired of having a different doctor every
month," she said.

Procter, Sadler and another South Shore employee were indicted last year on
federal prescription-drug conspiracy charges and are scheduled for trail in
Ashland on April 23.

In closing arguments yesterday, Duvall told the jury that Williams "is as
guilty as any other drug trafficker that pushes 2.5 million doses of pain
killers. The difference is that he was a doctor and he should know better,"
he said.

Duvall said Williams is a "doctor who has prostituted his medical license
in order to market drugs to 150 patients a day."