A Texas man who co-owned a Little Rock medical clinic that federal agents shut down in 2015, labeling it a "pill mill," was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison.
U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. found that Anthony Markeith King deserved more than the maximum eight-year penalty recommended by federal sentencing guidelines for being part of a conspiracy that distributed more than 425,000 hydrocodone pills and 230,993 Xanax pills in Arkansas between June 2014 and May 20, 2015.
That was the day agents raided the KJ Medical Clinic at 11215 Hermitage Road, which had opened Nov. 14, 2014, a month after the Artex Clinic at the same location closed.
King had been a recruiter for Artex since it was opened in June 2014 by two men who operated several similar clinics in the Dallas area. Prosecutors said King, who had recruited people to be patients at the Dallas clinics, moved to Arkansas because he had family connections in the state and the owners of the Texas clinics were trying to expand their network of pain-management clinics.
The Artex clinic closed Oct. 6, 2014, the day hydrocodone was reclassified from a Schedule III narcotic to a Schedule II narcotic, making it harder for nonphysicians to write prescriptions for it. When the clinic reopened as KJ Medical a month later with new protocols designed around the reclassification, King became a co-owner.
The "pill mill" moniker applies to clinics that appear to be legitimate medical clinics from the outside, but their real purpose is to make money off the distribution of maximum dosages and amounts of the highly addictive controlled substances for nonmedical purposes. After filling prescriptions from the pill mills, the "patients" often turn the pills over to recruiters in exchange for money, and the drugs are then distributed at steep prices on the streets.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says heroin-related overdose deaths in the U.S. nearly quadrupled in the past decade. The epidemic has been blamed largely on the prolific use of prescription opiates that have become too costly for many addicts to buy on the street, causing them to turn to heroin, a cheaper alternative.
At a trial last summer in Moody's Little Rock courtroom, jurors acquitted a physician and a physician's assistant who worked at the Little Rock clinics and faced distribution conspiracy charges, deciding the two didn't know at the time that they worked for a pill mill. But jurors convicted a nurse practitioner, Kristen Raines, who has yet to be sentenced.
King, who led the indictment, pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge before trial. Two Little Rock physicians who had been charged in the conspiracy were among others who pleaded guilty to reduced charges before the trial.
At King's sentencing hearing Tuesday, Moody rejected Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Gardner's effort to hold King accountable for 2.6 million hydrocodone and Xanax pills distributed through the Texas clinics during the same time period when the 656,145 pills were prescribed at the Little Rock clinics.
King's attorney, Gene McKissic of Pine Bluff, argued that King pleaded guilty to the Arkansas indictment only, and didn't admit to any charges in a simultaneous indictment issued in Texas. Moody said that to increase King's penalty based on the Texas allegations, prosecutors would have to prove that the Texas conduct was relevant to the Arkansas case.
Gardner argued that evidence presented at the trial linked King and John Christopher Ware, the co-owner of KJ Medical Clinic, to activity at the Texas clinics dating back to 2013. She called Artex "an extension" of the Texas clinics, and noted that according to testimony at the trial, several employees of the Arkansas clinic were trained at the Texas clinics.
Ultimately, however, Moody said he would sentence King based only on the number of pills prescribed at the Little Rock clinics.
According to testimony, the clinics processed about 30 "patients" each day, some of whom lined up outside the clinic as early as 6 a.m. and then jostled to get inside when the doors opened, paying $200 cash for a cursory exam by a nurse or a physician's assistant.
Prescriptions were written after clinic employees checked a prescription-monitoring program to make sure the patient hadn't already recently received a similar prescription, which would trigger an investigation by authorities. Physicians monitored patient records from afar, relying on the nurse's or physician's assistants written reports of the patient's complaints.
Federal sentencing guidelines recommended 78 to 97 months, or 6½ to 8 years, in prison for King, based on the number of pills illegally prescribed at the Arkansas clinics and his lack of an extensive criminal history. Federal statutes allowed for a prison term of up to 20 years and a fine of up to $1 million.
McKissic asked that King be allowed to serve his prison sentence on home detention, arguing that he wouldn't pose a danger to society requiring incarceration.
King told the judge: "I'm a law-abiding citizen now. I've been working hard to take care of my family, and I see that I can make it like that. I'm asking for a second chance."
Gardner argued that King "was an integral part of a criminal organization" and that under his leadership, "hundreds of thousands of hydrocodone pills were distributed, causing great damage to society."
Moody said he sentenced King above the recommended guideline range because of his daily violations of the law and the quantity of drugs involved.
King was taken into custody immediately after the sentence was imposed, while several family members in the courtroom gallery wept.
Metro on 01/04/2017