Anna Nicole's Doctors Probed
Eight months and 2,300 miles away from where Anna Nicole Smith died of an overdose, California authorities on Friday raided homes and offices of the doctors who prescribed drugs to the former Playboy Playmate.
California Department of Justice agents raided the office of Smith's psychiatrist, Dr. Khristine Eroshevich, and the home and office of Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, who prescribed the painkiller methadone to Smith shortly before her death.
In all, six locations were raided, said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Authorities did not name the doctors but their attorneys confirmed the searches.
Smith died of an accidental drug overdose in February at a Florida hotel. She was 39.
An autopsy showed Smith had 14 drugs in her system when she died, reports The Early Show national correspondent Hattie Kauffman. They included Cipro, methadone, Valium, sedatives, muscle relaxants, anti-seizure drugs, flu medicine, and growth hormone.
The California Department of Justice began investigating in March because "dangerous drugs ... were part of the death of Anna Nicole Smith, and I learned that these were California doctors and California prescriptions," Attorney General Jerry Brown said at a news conference.
Photos: Anna Nicole Smith
Brown declined to speculate on what charges the doctors might face if it was determined they improperly prescribed drugs, but indicated they might be serious. Noting the ongoing Medical Board investigation, Brown said there could be violations of the medical practice code.
"You don't go to a judge and get a search warrant for somebody's home unless you think some rather serious crime has been committed," Brown said.
Photos: Tragic Blondes
A call to Eroshevich's attorney, Gary Lincenberg, was not immediately returned. However, he told KNBC-TV that the investigation only concerned whether prescriptions to Smith were proper.
"This has nothing to do with whether or not Dr. Eroshevich in any way contributed to Anna Nicole Smith's death," he said.
Ellyn Garafalo, a lawyer for Kapoor, confirmed the doctor's home and offices were searched but declined to comment further.
Howard K. Stern, Smith's attorney and companion, reportedly was at Eroshevich's Studio City home when investigators arrived. The psychiatrist had been watching Stern's dogs while he was away in New York, and he arrived back early Friday, Stern's attorney, Lin Wood, told CelebTV.com.
"He is not involved in anything that is being investigated and it has nothing to do with him," said James T. Neavitt, another Stern attorney.
But CBS News legal analyst Mickey Sherman told Kauffman that Stern has "jeopardy there. I don't know what he did or didn't do, but anybody who's that close to her should have been able to see this is a woman who's trotting with death."
In an interview Monday with The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm, Court TV anchor and The Early Show contributor Lisa Bloom said Stern won't "have liability for just handing her drugs that were legally prescribed to her, but if he got drugs, for example, in his name and then gave them to her, that could very well be a criminal act, especially because he's an attorney. So he's supposed to know what he's doing. Also, if he was procuring drugs for her under a fake name, which has been alleged, because she's a celebrity, didn't want everybody to know what she was taking. It doesn't matter. Under California law, you can't prescribe drugs and you can't get drugs under a fake name. And he should have known that."
Kauffman says investigators may be sending a message to Hollywood doctors: No more over-prescribing, just because your client is a celebrity.
The Medical Board of California also is investigating both Kapoor and Eroshevich. According to documents, Eroshevich authorized all 11 prescription medications found in Smith's hotel room the day she died. Eroshevich had traveled with Smith to Florida.
More than 600 pills, including 450 muscle relaxants, were missing from prescriptions that were no more than five weeks old, according to the documents obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request.
Brown said he did not know if the criminal probe could lead to exhumation of Smith's body, which is buried in the Bahamas. He said investigators have learned "quite a lot" from Bahamian authorities but he declined to be specific on grounds that it might jeopardize the investigation.
Asked if the probe would expand to include Smith's son, Daniel, who died of a drug overdose in the Bahamas less than five months before his mother, Brown replied: "We're not setting any limits on this investigation."
Agents have so far reviewed over 100,000 computer images and files, analyzed patient profiles and pharmacy logs and interviewed witnesses throughout the country and abroad, Brown said.
University of Southern California law professor Jody Armour said potential charges could include manslaughter if it is determined that a physician "exposed others to harm recklessly," and even murder if the action was so reckless it constituted malice.
A claim of criminal homicide could be brought by arguing a physician generated excessive risks, he said, by "prescribing this substance without proper supervision or without diagnosis or without a proper foundation of some kind."
Such claims are unusual in the case of physicians because society generally wants them to have wide discretion on treatment, Armour said.
However, several doctors have gone to prison because they prescribed painkillers for patients who died.
In Florida, Dr. Freddie J. Williams got a federal life sentence in 2004 for prescribing oxycodone that led to two deaths, and Dr. James Graves was sentenced to 63 years in state prison for four manslaughter counts in 2002 linked to his prescriptions.
The current investigation could lead to state charges either in California or Florida, or federal charges if the government decides it wants to send a signal that over-prescribing drugs won't be tolerated, Armour said.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley said in a statement that his office will file charges "as appropriate," after evaluating results of the search warrants.
Court TV's Bloom told Storm, "They could lose their license, plain and simple, and they could face criminal penalties. ... These people were her friends, they were very close to her. Dr. Eroshevich, the psychiatrist who prescribed a lot of these medications, was with her on the weekend she died. She left the day before. They had very close personal relationships as well as doctor-patient relationships."
Bloom added that Smith "was an adult and responsible for her own actions, but she was grief-struck. She was clearly upset and an addict. I think these doctors have a lot to be concerned about."