Diego doctor jailed for 25 years in Miami

However, Richard Lubin, attorney for Dr Denis Deonarine, plans to appeal the lengthy sentence handed down, and believes that if he is successful, his client may only serve five years in jail.

The sentence was imposed last Friday by United States circuit judge Richard Wennet in West Palm Beach, Miami. The sentencing had originally been carded for July 15, but was put off to give the court more time to hear last minute pleas in mitigation.

Deonarine’s sentencing lasted three hours. He was convicted in May on ten counts, including trafficking in oxycodone, racketeering and Medicaid fraud. Deonarine was the first doctor in Florida to be indicted for first- degree murder in connection with the OxyContin overdose of a patient. He was acquitted of the murder charge along with 74 other charges.

Before sentence was passed, Deonarine begged judge Wennet for "mercy, leniency and empathy."

The practitioner, who lived in Jupiter, was remorseful for disgracing his family and his profession. He told the court that he had dedicated his life to his patients, calling medicine "my love, my hobby, my life, my career."

"It cost me two divorces," the doctor said. "I worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I took my own calls."

Any possible mistakes, he said, were unintentional. "Please, look at some of the good things I have done in my life." Deonarine practised for years in his office on the Diego Martin Main Road before he "disappeared" from the local scene. Very few people knew where he went until he was arrested and charged in Miami in 2001.

Investigators seized more than 2,600 patient files from Deonarine’s office after the death of his patient, Michael Labzda. His office was shut and his medical licence suspended.

A number of Deonarine’s patients, and his daughter, turned up in court and spoke highly of the Trinidad medico.

The judge had no choice but to give Deonarine 25 years in prison, the minimum mandatory sentence for trafficking more than 28 grammes of the painkiller oxycodone.

Assistant US attorney Barbara Burns, who prosecuted, said the doctor may have entered medicine with good intentions, but greed took over when he began focusing on pain management in mid-2000. He raised his rates and offered incentives to employees for bringing in additional business, according to Burns.

At his May trial, she blamed Deonarine for the 2001 overdose death of college student Labzda, who went to the Trinidadian complaining of back and toe pain and was prescribed OxyContin without any medical tests or diagnostic procedures. Deonarine, who was originally charged with murder and 74 other counts, was acquitted at the end of the May trial, but was convicted on ten others.

On appeal, Lubin plans to argue that jurors combined four months of prescriptions when deciding to convict Deonarine of trafficking. Lubin argued previously that it would be the equivalent of charging someone who sells a gramme of cocaine a day over a month’s time with felony drug trafficking.

A conviction on a second trafficking count, for four to 14 grammes of oxycodone, was a miscalculation by the jury, Lubin said. The weight should have been 2.4 grammes, which carries a lesser sentence.

Should the two trafficking counts be overturned on appeal, Lubin said, the racketeering conviction should also be tossed since trafficking forms the basis of racketeering. Deonarine received 12 and a half years for racketeering, though all of the sentences are to run concurrently. The doctor received five years on other various charges related to the sale and delivery of Xanax and Valium.

At the trial, Lubin argued that his client may have been a poor recordkeeper who may have made mistakes, but that his actions were never criminal.

Before learning of his punishment, Deonarine apologised to his family and his patients for the "humiliation and disgrace" brought by his actions.

"I didn’t enter medicine for money," he said.