Criminal Charges Stand Against Anna Nicole Smith Doctor
After the 2007 death of Anna Nicole Smith, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor came under investigation for prescriptions that he wrote for the actress. Dr. Kapoor was eventually arrested in 2009 for illegally providing prescription drugs to an addict. Smith's autopsy concluded that she died of an accidental overdose. Nine medications were found in her system after she overdosed at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino near Hollywood, Florida.
In addition, Dr. Khristine Eroshevich and Smith's lawyer/lover Howard K. Stern were charged with providing sedatives and opiates to Smith; they are not charged with causing her death. According to the prosecution, the three made a conscious effort to provide Anna Nicole Smith with drugs that ultimately led to her death.
On Tuesday Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Wesley rejected a motion by Kapoor to have the drug conspiracy charged dropped, as well as a charge of obtaining a prescription drug under a false name. Even if the two counts had been dropped, four others would remain against the doctor.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown said in 2009 that the evidence against Kapoor and his co-conspirators was strong:
Her doctors knew she was addicted and gave her drugs "excessively," Brown said. The quantity of the drugs, the variety of the drugs, the combination at any given point and her continuing to use that; that, to a professional, is clear evidence of addiction.
These cocktails of methadone and antidepressants and sleeping pills and Xanax, you put all that into a cocktail, it explodes and can cause death, injury and permanent morbidity and disability, he said.
TMZ obtained documents which show that on August 25, 2006, less than two weeks before Smith gave birth, Kapoor wrote a prescription for methadone for Michelle Chase. Michelle Chase was an alias Anna Nicole used. Under California law, it's illegal to prescribe a controlled substance to a false name.
Always on top of celebrity legal matters, TMZ also obtained a copy of papers filed by Dr. Kapoor, challenging the charges. According to the papers, Kapoor challenges the allegation he obtained Anna's prescriptions by "fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation." He acknowledges filling a prescription for Anna Nicole Smith under a pseudonym, but he claims he only did so to protect her privacy, not to "divert drugs for illegal sale or use."
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