Doctor’s Opioid Prescription Conviction Tossed After Supreme Court Ruling

Doctor’s Opioid Prescription Conviction Tossed After Supreme Court Ruling
Tablets of the opioid-based Hydrocodone at a pharmacy in Portsmouth, Ohio, on June 21, 2017. Bryan Woolston/Reuters
Reuters
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A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction of a doctor accused of unlawfully prescribing addictive opioids in Arizona and Wyoming after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in his favor that made it harder to prosecute such cases.

The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that under last year’s Supreme Court’s decision, jurors were wrongly instructed on how to determine whether Shakeel Kahn knowingly prescribed powerful drugs in an illegal manner.