by Admin
DOJ eyes Kan. complaint against federal prosecutor
Jul 10, 2009
By: Roxana Hegeman
The Associated Press
WICHITA, Kan. – A political activist targeted in a federal obstruction investigation in Kansas said she has filed a complaint with the Justice Department alleging prosecutorial misconduct in a grand jury investigation of her role in the case of a doctor whose clinic has been linked by prosecutors to 59 overdose deaths.
Siobhan Reynolds, president of the Santa Fe, N.M.-based Pain Relief Network, said Friday that her complaint against Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway was referred to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility. The office examines possible ethics violations by Justice Department employees.
The Justice Department in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas declined Friday to confirm whether the complaint was filed.
“Our attorneys are dedicated to performing their duties in accordance with the highest professional standards,” said Jim Cross, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office. “I think we welcome any questions, direction or assistance from the Office of Professional Responsibility.”
Reynolds’ group has supported Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife, Linda, who were indicted in December 2007 on 34 counts accusing them of unlawfully prescribing painkillers and overbilling for services at their clinic in the Wichita suburb of Haysville.
The Pain Relief Network, which opposes what it sees as federal efforts to crack down on chronic pain treatment, has helped the Schneiders line up attorneys and expert witnesses, and has put up billboards supporting them.
The Justice Department has issued a grand jury subpoena for Reynolds and her group seeking all correspondence and other documents related to the Schneider case, including Reynolds’ interactions with attorneys, patients, Schneider family members, doctors and others.
Reynolds has refused to comply with the subpoena. She said Friday that she has not yet been found in contempt of court.
“Ms. Treadway’s conduct in the case has been nothing short of shocking and ruthless; she has in fact displayed the kind of ‘win at all costs’ mentality that you have publicly stated your department will no longer tolerate,” Reynolds wrote in her June 18 letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
The American Civil Liberties Union has taken up the Reynolds defense in the grand jury proceedings, claiming in initial court papers that subpoenas sought by a “frustrated prosecutor seeking to silence a dissenting advocate” have a chilling effect on First Amendment rights.
The ACLU has also contended Treadway – who also is prosecuting the Schneiders – had misused the grand jury process to circumvent the standard criminal discovery process in the related pending case against the doctor and his wife.
U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson rejected earlier this week the ACLU’s motion asking the judge to reconsider an earlier ruling declining to quash the subpoenas, Reynolds said Friday.
http://www.kansas.com/457/story/887210.html
So is this kind of attack, a grand jury subpoena for everything but the activist’s underwear, a normal proceeding in a case like this? I don’t know a lot about legal proceedings, but coupled with that accusation of “obstruction of justice” it looks more like a punitive proceeding than it does any sort of attempt at looking for the truth. One would think that if someone were to point out a procedural error or worse to a professional in pursuit of her duty – that duty supposedly being “justice”, which is a deadly serious, heavy responsibility any way you look at it – it would behoove that person to give serious consideration to the possibility that perhaps she has erred. Instead, there’s a feeling of, “We don’t make mistakes here, and if you don’t shut up and go away, you’ll pay dearly for interfering in our attack on this criminal.” The problem being, of course, that first, people do make mistakes, and second, that the doctor is not a criminal until he’s been convicted. That seems to be something the DOJ has more and more of late simply set aside, as though it’s just not important any more. What with a loud and clear “trial by media” before any legal proceedings but arrest have been initiated, presumptive innocence seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird. If that is truly the case, then so has justice.
The DEA is comprised of police – cops – you remember: “To protect and to serve.” It is neither protection, nor is it any sort of service to set someone up to look as bad as possible, publicize the results and call it an “investigation”. The same can be said of seizing all assets that could possibly be used to finance a legal defense. That just makes it clear that “justice” is only for the very wealthy now in this country, and if the authorities want you busted, they’ll make certain you have no way to defend yourself. Even if this doctor manages to prove his innocence against this monolithic agency that typically destroys anyone or any corporation it chooses to accuse, he will still have lost everything he’s worked for, including his reputation, as the DOJ has never, so far as I can learn, printed a retraction that is the media equal of the VERY loud accusations that let everyone know this guy is a criminal in the first place.
I started on something in the last paragraph I didn’t get around to finishing: the DEA is made up of cops – NOT doctors. They’re pretty good at making numbers look bad (they can make four pills a days for a reasonable umber of patients look like this one doctor must be supplying the entire Midwest with opiates, even though the numbers and doses are actually on the low end of therapy for chronic pain). And it’s always possible to find a medical Luddite or two who are willing to go against all of the medical science that shows conclusively that treatment of chronic intractable pain is the “gold standard” of treatment for good reason, just as advocates of “abstinence only” sex education abound, even though every honest study ever done shows it to be damaging, not helpful. There are even “Flat-Earthers” and people who insist the moon walk (Armstrong’s, not Jackson’s) was a fake and the moon landing never really happened.
The ability to find or force someone, even a so-called “expert”, for which there are a number of definitions, to push a dissenting view does not mean that view is correct. Police should NOT be setting treatment standards, but in the case of chronic pain treatment, they ARE. That’s basically what these attacks on doctors and their patients come down to: if the dose or the number of doses per day looks like too much TO A COP, then the DEA goes baying after the victim – and what else can you call one lone doctor under attack by a government agency that can and does attack forever? – like hounds after a rabbit. And in both cases, you’re likely to have little left but bloody rags by the time things get sorted out, if they ever do. Wow, it turned out he was innocent? Well, how nice for him – except that he’s lost a lifetime’s worth of work, done time in prison, lost his home and place of business, his reputation, most possessions he could sell, and “just in case”, he can probably no longer prescribe schedule 2 or 3 substances – in other words, he can no longer use some of the major tools of his trade.
This is not justice. It’s a witch hunt, and it’s designed to “prove” someone guilty in exactly the same way the Inquisitions earlier in our history were. To be accused is to be guilty, and in the rare case of innocence, the accused is still destroyed. We need to watch what happens here, closely. Do we have a justice system, or do we have a “Ministry of the Faith” that’s never wrong? Ms. Treadway, granted that as a prosecutor, it’s your job to convict – BUT NOT IF THE ACCUSED IS INNOCENT! Please try to remember that as you go about your work. And try also to remember that, in this country at least, a citizen (the source of the government’s power, if you’ll recall) who sees what looks to be a serious error being committed by a government agency has every right to point it out and to demand that that agency justify it’s actions, and to correct them if there is a wrong being committed.
We are either free citizens, or we are helpless victims before a monolithic power against which there is no defense, and from the pronouncements of which there is no appeal. There is no other possibility. So far, your conduct in this case has shown which you see it as, and if the appearance you give is true, the Department of Justice is the last place you belong.
Ian MacLeod
Activist PRN. Nonprofit, Nonpartisan, 501(C)(3) Corporation.
Veteran, Disabled, Chronic Intractable Pain Patient, 25 years
Primum, non nocere!
Illegitimis non carborundum!
My reply shows here on PRN, not on the Wichita Eagle newspaper site. I think I’ll see about fixing that shortly. Preaching to the choir is good practice, but shouldn’t be the main event.
Ian