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Hsiu-Ying Tseng, convicted of murdering three of her patients by drug overdose, was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison, making her the only US doctor ever convicted of murder for recklessly prescribing meds, the lead prosecutor said.
The powerful painkillers Hsiu-Ying Tseng prescribed included oxycodone, sold as Percocet and other brand names, and hydrocodone, popularly known under the brand name Vicodin.
She was only charged with three killings because other factors were involved in some of those deaths, such as drugs prescribed by other doctors and one possible suicide.
The first of her patients to die had received prescriptions from her two days earlier for oxycodone, the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and the muscle-relaxer Soma, prosecutors said.
Tseng, 45, was convicted of all but one of 21 drug-related counts in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
She was also charged with illegally writing prescriptions for two of the deceased patients and 16 other people, three of them undercover agents.
Tseng prescribed “crazy, outrageous amounts of medication” to patients who didn’t need the pills, Deputy District Attorney John Niedermann told jurors during her trial. The doctor repeatedly ignored warning signs even after several patients died.
“Something is wrong with what you’re doing if your patients are dying,” Niedermann said.
Tseng’s lawyer said her client naively trusted her patients. Defense lawyer Tracy Green said patients testified they were legitimately in pain and later became dependent on the drugs, hiding their addictions by seeing other doctors and picking up prescriptions from different pharmacies.
Vu Nguyen, 29, of Lake Forest, Steven Ogle, 25, of Palm Desert, and Joseph Rovero, 21, an Arizona State University student from San Ramon, died of overdoses between March and December 2009.
Tseng barely kept any records on the three men until she was contacted by the Medical Board of California, prosecutors said, then fabricated documents to make it look like she had kept thorough records.
Hsiu-Ying Tseng also ignored pleas from family members of patients who demanded she stop prescribing them drugs, prosecutors said.
Agencies/Canadajournal
It’s about time a doctor was convicted of drug dealing as most of them profit from dealing drugs. My wife died at age 49 from a prescription morphine overdose. Basically the doctors killed here because they did not monitor her drug intake. Friends and family assumed everything was taken care of because she was “under a doctors’ care”. If it wasn’t so sad it would be a joke.