A painful decision

Posted by Marc Hodak on May 1, 2007 under Unintended consequences | Read the First Comment

Dr. Hurwitz was convicted on Friday for prescribing pain killers to dealers and addicts. No, the jury didn’t find any criminal intent. No, the jury didn’t think he made money from selling drugs. No, the jury didn’t think he acted from any motive but care for his patients. Apparently, the jury was able to convict Dr. Hurwitz based on the sense that he ignored certain “red flags,” as the prosecutor put it. In other words, Hurwitz was a good doctor, but a bad cop.

On reading the the series of articles by John Tierney (one of few reasons to subscribe to the NY TImes), it’s hard to blame the jury. They were buried under an avalanche of charges and information, and the prosecutor effectively used the specter of “the evil of drugs” that seems to cow so many ordinary people. They are also cowed by the judicial system’s heavy-handed warnings against jury nullification, and must have felt that acquittal on all 59 charges (they convicted him on ���just��� 16) might have been interpreted as such.

I’m sure that more than one juror must have asked during deliberations what might happen when it comes time for them to find treatment for pain if they send this guy to jail. The response from the other jurors would have been, “we aren’t allowed to consider that. The judge said we can only consider the law and the evidence in this case.” Sure enough. But some of those jurors were certainly aware of the secondary consequences of the law and its application, and it no doubt pained them to consider those consequences.

We can’t blame the jury, though. It’s not their sin or the sins of Dr. Hurwitz that we will be paying for. It’s not even the sins of the prosecutor or judge; they didn’t create the law. Is the legislature to blame? Is it the zealous, Orwellian congressmen who seek to make us all soldiers in the “war on drugs?” Or is it the people who elect them, and respond to their pious rhetoric?