Opinion ID: 612732
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Prosecution of Shaygan and the Witness Tampering Investigation

Text: On June 9, 2007, a patient of Dr. Ali Shaygan, James Brendan Downey, died from an overdose of various drugs including methadone and cocaine. Shaygan had prescribed methadone to Downey two days before his death. An autopsy revealed that the level of methadone in Downey's blood alone was enough to kill him. After Downey's death, the Drug Enforcement Administration conducted an undercover investigation of Shaygan. Matthew Drake and Paul Williams, local police officers, posed as prospective patients of Shaygan to determine how easily they could obtain prescriptions of controlled substances. Drake and Williams recorded their conversations and obtained prescriptions for several controlled substances on their first visits to Shaygan. The officers presented no medical records and were given minimal physical examinations. On February 8, 2008, the government filed an indictment that charged in 23 counts that Shaygan had distributed and dispensed controlled substances outside the scope of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose in violation of federal law. 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). When the indictment was filed, the government had not yet identified any of Shaygan's other patients. On February 11, 2008, Administration agents arrested Shaygan and obtained his consent to search his office. The agents seized patient files and Shaygan's day planner. On May 14, 2008, Shaygan filed a motion to suppress statements made at the time of his arrest. In the motion, Shaygan alleged that, [d]espite Dr. Shaygan's repeated, unequivocal requests to speak with a lawyer, the agents continued to interrogate him, ignoring his requests as if they did not exist. He also alleged that an agent us[ed] scare tactics and repeatedly ma[de] clicking noises with his firearm[]... [and] brandished his firearm in front of Dr. Shaygan, intimidating him. The government filed a response that contested the factual allegations in the motion to suppress. Instead of a clear request for an attorney, the government alleged that Shaygan asked, [S]hould I call my attorney? or [D]on't I need to call my attorney? According to the government, Shaygan was advised that he could either invoke his right to counsel and not answer any questions or he could choose to cooperate, and he stated that he wanted to cooperate and answered questions. The government determined from Shaygan's day planner that he had met with Downey and several additional patients, including Andrew Gribben and Courtney Tucker, on the same day at a Starbucks coffee store. An Administration agent interviewed one of Shaygan's patients, Carlos Vento, on July 29, 2008. According to an Administration DEA-6 report, Vento stated that Shaygan had offered to pay him and another patient, Trinity Clendening, if they kept silent about Shaygan's role in Downey's death. On July 31, 2008, the parties participated in a discovery conference at which the lead prosecutor confronted the lead defense attorney about the motion to suppress. As the parties argued about which version of the facts was correct, the lead prosecutor, Sean Cronin, stated to Shaygan's lead attorney, David Markus, that pursuing the motion to suppress would result in a seismic shift. Soon afterward, Markus had Shaygan take a polygraph test. The Administration interviewed Clendening on August 8, 2008, and he corroborated Vento's accusations about Shaygan's offer to pay for their silence. On August 13, 2008, the Administration interviewed Gribben, who stated that he and a friend, David Falcon, had received prescriptions from Shaygan without medical examinations. Although the government was initially unable to locate Falcon, it eventually found him, and he testified at trial. The Administration interviewed Tucker on August 15, 2008, and she identified her boyfriend, Wayne McQuarrie, as an additional patient of Shaygan. According to a DEA-6 report prepared by Administration Agent Christopher Wells about Tucker's interview, Tucker made positive statements about Shaygan, including that he conducted a thorough examination and seemed very interested in her well being. The DEA-6 report also contained negative statements attributed to Tucker concerning Shaygan, including that he seemed to become more interested in making money than addressing her medical condition or improving her overall health during the year and a half that she purchased prescriptions from him. Soon after Agent Wells interviewed Tucker, defense investigator Michael Graff spoke with Tucker on the telephone. Graff later explained in an email to Shaygan's attorneys that Tucker thought that Agent Wells had tried to put a negative spin on her statements about Shaygan. At a hearing on the motion to suppress on August 26, 2008, Markus recounted Cronin's seismic shift comment and related it to an abandonment of plea negotiations and a change in prosecutorial tactics: [Cronin] told me that ... if we were to litigate these issues, there was going to be no more plea discussions.... [I]f I went after his witnesses, and to use his words[,] there would be [a] seismic shift in the way he would prosecute the case. On September 17, 2008, Administration agents interviewed McQuarrie, Vento, and Clendening, and on September 26, 2008, the government filed a superseding indictment that contained 141 counts. The additional counts in the superseding indictment alleged additional charges based on the newly identified patients. The government filed the superseding indictment only nine days after Administration agents had interviewed McQuarrie for the first time. A magistrate judge recommended that Shaygan's statements following his arrest should be suppressed because he had invoked his right to counsel. The magistrate judge discredited the testimony of Administration agents in part because Cronin had prepared the agents together for the hearing. The magistrate judge found a defense witness's testimony more credible. That witness stated that he heard Shaygan ask, [M]ay I please have my lawyer? The defense witness did not testify that repeated requests were made; nor did the witness testify that agents used scare tactics to intimidate Shaygan. The district court later adopted the magistrate judge's report and recommendation. After Tucker and McQuarrie were subpoenaed to testify as government witnesses at trial, Tucker called Agent Wells and expressed confusion about why she would be testifying for the prosecution. Tucker sought reassurance from Agent Wells that she and McQuarrie would not be portrayed as drug addicts. Immediately after the conversation, Agent Wells called Cronin and said that he was concerned that Tucker was going south as a witness and was showing signs of reluctance in cooperating with the government. Agent Wells did not tell Cronin that he was concerned about potential witness tampering by the defense team; Cronin later acknowledged that it was his idea during the phone call to explore the possibility of a witness tampering investigation. Cronin and his fellow prosecutor, Andrea Hoffman, spoke with Karen Gilbert, then chief of the narcotics section of the United States Attorney's Office, and informed her about Tucker's telephone call to Agent Wells. Cronin had earlier called an attorney at the Enforcement Operations Office of the Department of Justice to determine whether the United States Attorney's Office needed the approval of the Department to record telephone calls with members of the defense team. The attorney at the Department told him that the Office did not need approval, and Cronin reported this opinion to Gilbert. Gilbert agreed that it would be permissible to ask potential government witnesses, Vento and Clendening, to record calls with the defense team. Gilbert instructed Cronin that she would be responsible for the collateral investigation and that Cronin and Hoffman should take no part in the investigation. Gilbert also instructed Agent Wells not to disclose information about the collateral investigation to Cronin or Hoffman, but she failed to advise the Administration that Agent Wells was involved in both the main case and the collateral investigation. Gilbert failed to comply with an internal policy of the United States Attorney's Office that the United States Attorney be notified before the commencement of an investigation of an attorney. Cronin called Agent Wells and told him to allow Vento and Clendening to record calls with the defense team, and Cronin said that, from that day forward, he would have no involvement in the collateral investigation. Vento later recorded a conversation with defense investigator Graff and reported the contact to Agent Wells. Agent Wells called Cronin and told him that Vento had recorded a call. Agent Wells contended that he called Cronin only because he was unable to reach Gilbert. The next day, Agent Wells and Gilbert listened to Vento's recording, and Gilbert determined that it contained no evidence of witness tampering. But Gilbert decided to continue the investigation. Soon afterward, Gilbert assigned another Assistant United States Attorney, Dustin Davis, to the collateral investigation. Agent Wells later produced a DEA-6 report about both his earlier conversation with Tucker and Vento's recording of Graff. Later, Agent Wells spoke with Clendening about a recording he had made of a conversation with defense attorney Markus. Clendening reported that he had been able to record only a small portion of the conversation before his recording device became disconnected. Agent Wells later stated that he did not listen to Clendening's recording or report the content of Clendening's conversation with Markus to either Cronin or Hoffman. Clendening also recorded a second conversation with Markus that later came to light in open court; Clendening had not told Agent Wells about this second recording. The Administration later reassigned the collateral investigation from Agent Wells to Agent James Brown. Agent Brown then called Vento and Clendening to tell them that they would not be permitted to record future conversations without first executing agreements to be confidential informants. The next day, Vento signed a confidential informant agreement, but Clendening never met with Agent Brown and did not sign an agreement. Agent Brown prepared a DEA-6 report about the confidential informant agreement with Vento. Cronin and Hoffman later called Agent Brown to inform him that the trial was going to begin in eight days. At a status conference the week before trial, the district court ordered the government to turn over any DEA-6 reports so that the court could read them before trial to determine if they contained any exculpatory material that should be given to the defense under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). Two days later, Cronin filed DEA-6 reports for several witnesses. Cronin had asked Agent Wells for all DEA-6 reports, but did not ask specifically for those generated in the collateral investigation. The government did not produce the DEA-6 report of Agent Wells's interview of Tucker that had prompted the collateral investigation or Agent Brown's DEA-6 report of Vento's confidential informant agreement. Trial began on February 17, 2009, and the first witness for the government was Downey's girlfriend, Crystal Bartenfelder. Bartenfelder testified that she had visited Shaygan's office with Downey and that Shaygan had not conducted any kind of physical examination of Downey. She testified that, during the same visit, Downey asked Shaygan for more oxycodone than he had previously been prescribed. She testified that Shaygan expressed concern that the increased amount of oxycodone would look suspicious, so Shaygan suggested methadone, which Downey accepted. Bartenfelder was with Downey the night he died, and she testified that he died in his sleep after taking the methadone. Three of Shaygan's former associates testified for the government. Shaygan's former business partner, Michael Marchese, testified that Shaygan provided him prescriptions for controlled substances whenever he asked, without legitimate medical reasons, and he testified that Shaygan falsified medical records. Marchese also testified that he purchased pills directly from Shaygan and then resold the pills. Amber Herring, one of Shaygan's nurses, testified that Shaygan wrote prescriptions for her for no charge with the understanding that Herring would give Shaygan half of the pills once she filled the prescription. Wilberg Guzman, Shaygan's former office assistant, testified that Shaygan provided prescriptions in Guzman's name and had Guzman fill the prescription with money Shaygan gave him and then deliver the pills to Shaygan. The police officers who had posed as patients, Drake and Williams, also testified. The government played tape recordings of their conversations with Shaygan for the jury. Drake and Williams explained how Shaygan had provided them prescriptions for controlled substances. The government also presented testimony from patients the government discovered after the first indictment had been filed and whose testimony supported the charges added in the superseding indictment. Vento testified that he called Shaygan after Downey died to tell him that Downey's brother was angry that Downey had taken an overdose of medication that Shaygan had prescribed. Vento stated that he and Clendening later visited Shaygan's office in Miami and told Shaygan that the Administration had interviewed Downey's girlfriend and that the Administration knew that Shaygan had been meeting with patients at a Starbucks. Vento testified that, after he informed Shaygan that he might be investigated, he watched Shaygan add information, such as weight and blood pressure measurements, that had been missing from Downey's medical file. The government presented evidence of several prescriptions Shaygan wrote for Vento that day, and Vento testified that Shaygan told him and Clendening that they did not need to pay for doctor visits again. Guzman also testified that Shaygan instructed him not to charge Vento for office visits because Vento was going to do landscaping work for him. Vento testified further that, when he visited Shaygan again four days later, Shaygan wrote a prescription that was intended for Vento's wife, but was actually written for Vento, even though Shaygan had not performed a medical examination on Vento's wife. Vento's wife testified and corroborated Vento's story. Clendening testified that he was not charged for his visit to Shaygan's office in exchange for not talking about what was said in the office regarding Downey's death and Shaygan's practices. The government presented a page from Shaygan's day planner to establish that Vento and Clendening had not been charged for their visit to Shaygan on the day in question. Shaygan admitted that he did not charge Vento or Clendening for their visit that day, but he contended that he did not charge them for the visit because he felt badly about Downey's death, not to ensure their silence. Neither Tucker's nor McQuarrie's testimony supported the prosecution's theory, but their earlier statements and evidence from their medical files did. Tucker testified that Shaygan was attentive and thorough. Tucker denied making negative statements about Shaygan  such as he seemed to be more interested in making money than in addressing her overall medical condition  that were attributed to her in the DEA-6 report that Agent Wells prepared after he interviewed her. McQuarrie testified that Shaygan reviewed his medical history and performed physical examinations. McQuarrie testified that Shaygan seemed more concerned with his well-being than with money, and when the government attempted to impeach McQuarrie's testimony with his earlier statements to Administration agents, he stated that he could not recall whether he had answered the question differently. The government introduced the medical files of Tucker and McQuarrie, which contained prescriptions for several months without any record of corresponding medical evaluations. Two other patients who had been identified after Shaygan's arrest, Gribben and Falcon, testified in support of the charges in the superseding indictment. Gribben testified that he visited Shaygan because Gribben had heard that Shaygan would provide prescriptions for whatever pain pills a patient wanted. Gribben testified that he met with Shaygan at a Starbucks on a few occasions. At these appointments, which lasted only about five to ten minutes, Gribben paid Shaygan and received the prescriptions; Shaygan did not perform a physical examination. Gribben admitted that he was not going to Shaygan for pain, but because he had a drug addiction. Falcon testified that Gribben introduced him to Shaygan. Falcon's first appointment with Shaygan was at a Starbucks where he received prescriptions without a physical examination. Falcon also testified that he later visited Shaygan at his office on multiple occasions and received prescriptions even though he never had a magnetic resonance image despite Shaygan's request that he obtain one. Falcon testified that he stopped seeing Shaygan and moved out of state because he was addicted to pain killers and it was [too] easy for [him] to obtain medication. The defense presented its own witnesses who testified that Shaygan treated them for non-pain management reasons, and Shaygan testified in his own defense. The defense also established its case by impeaching the credibility of the witnesses for the government. During the cross-examination of Clendening on February 19, 2009, Shaygan's counsel, Markus, asked Clendening if he recalled a telephone conversation in which Clendening told Markus that he would have to pay him for his testimony, and Clendening responded, No. I got it on a recording at my house. Markus did not immediately respond to this statement about a recording, nor did the government mention it on redirect. On the next day of trial, Gilbert appeared before the court to disclose the recording of conversations by Vento and Clendening. Gilbert testified at the sanctions hearing that she first heard about the existence of the recording mentioned by Clendening when she was at a restaurant on the evening of February 19, 2009, with a group of people that included Cronin and Hoffman. After Gilbert revealed the existence of the collateral investigation, Shaygan moved for a mistrial. The district court declined to rule on Shaygan's motion for a mistrial, but instead ordered the government to produce affidavits from anyone with knowledge of the matter. The government provided the affidavits over the next few days. Shaygan later filed a motion to dismiss the indictment. The government argued that the fair remedy for the prosecution's failure to reveal that Vento and Clendening were confidential informants was to recall those two witnesses for further cross-examination. The government proposed that the jury should be given a limited instruction ... explaining that the recall is not through any fault of the defendant, but pointing out that certain materials were turned over late by the Government to[] ... allay[] Mr. Markus' concern that the jury will blame the defense. Shaygan initially argued that, if the court declined to dismiss the indictment or grant a mistrial, the only fair remedy was to strike the testimony of Vento and Clendening and explain to the jury about the misconduct and about the misrepresentations to them about these witnesses. The district court ruled that it was not going to strike the witnesses' testimony and wanted to know if Shaygan wanted to recall the two witnesses. The district court added that, even if the witnesses were recalled, it's not the end of the story.... I would have to go through the evidentiary hearing and determine what else I want to do at the end of the day here. Shaygan took the position that, absent dismissal, mistrial, or striking the testimony, recall of Vento and Clendening would be required. When Vento and Clendening were recalled, the district court instructed the jury that the recalling of the witnesses was attributable to prosecutorial misconduct in discovery: I am now going to reopen the defense cross-examination of two prior witnesses. These are witnesses you have heard from, Carlos Vento and Trinity Clendening. And the reason is that the United States has failed to provide timely to the defense certain information and discovery materials which could have been used by the defense during its cross-examination of each of these witnesses. This occurred through no fault of the defense. Now, during the cross-examination that you are going to hear, I expect that you will hear reference to the substance of recorded conversations of defense counsel or members of the defense team by these two witnesses. I have personally reviewed the substance of the recorded conversations, and I can assure you that the defense did nothing wrong. Because I concluded that the United States has acted improperly in not turning over the necessary discovery materials and also by allowing recordings to occur in the first place, I am reopening the witnesses' examination so you can hear everything that occurred. Other than that, I [have] no further comment on the evidence. Shaygan took advantage of the opportunity to focus the attention of the jury on the alleged misconduct by the government in the collateral investigation. During the new cross-examinations of Vento and Clendening, Shaygan accused them of not telling the whole truth to the jury because they had not revealed that they had been asked to record conversations with the defense team. In closing argument, Shaygan compared the alleged misconduct by the government to the Salem witch trials. Shaygan reminded the jury that the district court had instructed them that the United States [had] acted improperly, and argued that the jurors had been misled by the government. Shaygan argued that innocent women had been convicted and hung in the Salem witch trials because there were no jurors, and Shaygan urged the jury to say no and to make sure the Salem, Massachusetts[,] witch trials never happen again. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty on all counts. Immediately after the jury was dismissed, the district court ordered the government to appear on the following Monday to address the motions that have been filed. The court stated that it would hear alternative requests for sanctions, including whether a sanction in the form of attorney's fees and costs should be awarded under the Hyde Amendment.