National Roundup

Ohio
High court again refuses to hear abortion appeal
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court is again refusing to hear an appeal from the Dayton area’s last abortion clinic as the facility fights to avoid closure.

The court in August decided against hearing the Women’s Med Center challenge to the state’s operational rules that put the clinic’s future in question. The facility asked the court to reconsider . The court declined on Tuesday.

Messages seeking comment on that were left for the attorneys representing the clinic and the state.

Ohio health officials had revoked a license for the center in Kettering because it couldn’t get a written patient-transfer agreement from local hospitals as required by law.

Supporters of the clinic have argued the transfer rules were medically unnecessary and politically motivated.

Alabama
No jail time for judge convicted of ethics violation
PRATTVILLE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama judge has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor ethics charges for appointing his son to handle matters for his own court.

The Montgomery Advertiser reports former Autauga County Probate Judge Al Booth entered his plea to one count of theft of services on Monday. The 75-year-old faced felony ethics violations, but a grand jury indicted him on misdemeanor charges instead.

Circuit Judge Ben Fuller suspended jail time and gave Al Booth 40 hours of community service and mandated he pay back the county and serve two years’ probation.

The indictment accused Al Booth of appointing his son to handle court matters for pay while he was the judge. The indictment says the son was paid less than $500 on each of four occasions.

Al Booth says the violation was unintentional.

New York
Doctor gets 2 years prison in kickback scam
NEW YORK (AP) — A doctor once honored for his efforts in relieving patients’ chronic pain was sentenced to two years in prison Monday for accepting kickbacks in the form of speaking fees from a pharmaceutical company to prescribe large amounts of a highly addictive painkiller.

Todd Schlifstein was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood after pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge. She also ordered him to forfeit $127,100, the amount of money he received in the scheme. The prison term is half as long as what prosecutors sought.

Schlifstein was among five New York doctors charged last year with accepting bribes in the form of speaking fees to prescribe millions of dollars’ worth of a fentanyl-based spray. Three others have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing while another is awaiting trial.

Prosecutors say the spray made by the Arizona company Insys Therapeutics Inc. is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

The New York state Assembly in 2016 honored Schlifstein as a founding director of the New York State Pain Society.

Before the sentence was announced, Schlifstein choked up as he acknowledged “a terrible mistake.”

He said he agreed to enter the company’s “Speakers Bureau” at about the same time as his judgment suffered when his brother died suddenly.

Prosecutors say the doctors, four men and a woman, collected tens of thousands of dollars from the company over a four-year stretch beginning in August 2012.

Prosecutors said the “Speakers Bureau” was created purportedly to educate other practitioners about the fentanyl spray, but it was used instead to induce doctors to prescribe large volumes of the spray by paying them speaker program fees.

They said Schlifstein prescribed enough of the fentanyl-based drug, Subsys, to account for more than $2 million in net sales for Insys. The drug is intended to benefit cancer patients who become tolerant of opioids.
In court papers, prosecutors said Schlifstein was seeking to become an Insys speaker in October 2013 when he met with one of the company’s executives at a dinner that was supposed to be a fellow doctor’s speaker program.

Prosecutors said the dinner, which didn’t include any educational presentation, was followed by a trip by the group to a strip club Schlifstein frequented where everyone rang up a $4,100 bill at the pharmaceutical company’s expense for drinks, a private room and lap dances.

Iowa
State Supreme Court intervenes before legal malpractice trial
IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa educator who spent years in prison in a sex abuse case that was later dismissed will have to wait to seek damages in a lawsuit against the public defender who allegedly botched his representation.

A three-justice panel of the Iowa Supreme Court has taken the rare step of granting the state’s pre-trial appeal in a lawsuit filed by Donald Clark.

The move cancelled a legal malpractice trial set to begin Tuesday in Johnson County in which Clark was seeking millions in damages from the state. A single justice had earlier denied the state’s appeal.

Clark’s lawyer says the unintended impact is cruel to his client, delaying an outcome by years.

Clark, a former counselor at Lemme Elementary in Iowa City, was convicted in 2010 of abusing a student during the 2003 school year.

Clark was freed in 2016 after a judge ruled that his now-deceased public defender provided ineffective assistance. The alleged victim admitted to some false testimony and the county prosecutor’s office dropped the case. Clark maintains his innocence.

The high court will now consider when defense lawyers can be sued for malpractice.

Iowa
Farmer is 5th to get prison term for organic fraud
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — A Missouri farmer who played a role in the largest organic grain fraud scheme in U.S. history has been sentenced to nearly two years in federal prison.

John Burton became the 5th farmer to receive prison time in the “Field of Schemes” case on Monday, when he was sentenced by a federal judge in Cedar Rapids to 22 months behind bars.

Prosecutors said that Burton grew grain that he knew was not organic and sold it to Missouri farmer Randy Constant, knowing that Constant was going to market and sell it as organic.

Burton also worked for Constant, often spraying his fields with chemicals and fertilizers that are not allowed to be used on organic fields.

Constant is considered the mastermind of the $142 million fraud scheme, which tainted countless products that were marketed as organic. He died by suicide in August, weeks before he was to report to prison to begin serving a 10-year term.