The Akron Legal News

Appeals court upholds sentencing of 58-year-old woman who ran 'pill mill'

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: June 27, 2013

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court’s sentencing of a 58-year-old southern Ohio woman convicted of unlawfully distributing controlled substances.

The appeals court affirmed the judgment of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio’s 152-month prison sentence of Denise Huffman.

Huffman had challenged the district court’s decision to sentence her to prison followed by three years of supervised release after she pleaded guilty to maintaining premises for the purpose of unlawfully distributing controlled substances.

In 2001, Huffman opened the Tri-State Health Care and Pain Management Clinic in Portsmouth, Ohio.

The clinic earned a reputation around the region for prescribing large amounts of pain medication to drug addicts and local pharmacies began refusing to honor prescriptions from the clinic.

In 2003, Huffman opened her own drug dispensary inside the clinic to distribute medications directly to patients.

Over the next two years, Huffman ordered 1.5 million dosage units, or pills, of pain medication that contained Schedule II controlled substances.

About 1 million units were distributed from the dispensary but Huffman’s records were not kept properly to be able to indicate where they went.

According to the appellate court’s case summary, some of the controlled substances were given to employees as payment for their services.

Others were prescribed in such high amounts that they caused addiction in patients who were not previously dependent on drugs.

Paul Volkman, a chronic pain doctor, was hired at the clinic in 2003.

He prescribed narcotics outside of the scope of medical need, without examinations or diagnoses, and sometimes reaching toxic levels.

Some of the clinic’s patients died of drug overdose.

At trial, Huffman admitted she had knowledge of and assisted Volkman in his practices but she could not specify how much of the total amount of drugs distributed was legitimate or how much was criminally doled out.

In its presentence report, the probation office found that, of the one million pills dispensed or lost from the Tri-State dispensary and the additional million that Volkman prescribed beyond those dispensed at the clinic, Huffman was responsible for 1.5 million pills.

The presentence report recommended that Huffman’s base offense level be 32 with enhancements for her possession of a firearm and her role as an organizer or leader in the criminal activity. An adjusted offense level of 36 was calculated.

Huffman objected, claiming some of the medication prescribed by Volkman had been lawfully prescribed for legitimate medical reasons.

However, the trial court responded, “I don’t think it takes a medical expert to know that a small clinic in a small town like Portsmouth that dispensed in excess of one million dosage units is not fulfilling a legitimate medical need.”

The court granted a government motion for a three-level reduction of Huffman’s offense level and agreed to sentence her on the bottom end of the sentencing guidelines range.

In her appeal, Huffman argued that the district court made legal and factual errors when it incorrectly calculated the quantity of drugs for which she was responsible.

In the decision she wrote on behalf of the three-judge appellate panel, Circuit Judge Bernice Donald wrote, “A district court is allowed to estimate the quantity so long as the court can conclude that it is more likely than not that the defendant is actually responsible for an amount greater than or equal to the amount for which she is held legally responsible.”

The district court held Huffman responsible for an amount of at least one million but less than three million units of Schedule II controlled substances, a range that Huffman argued was not proven by a preponderance of the evidence.

Huffman admitted at her plea hearing that the dispensary distributed more than one million units of pain medications and that Volkman prescribed an additional one million not distributed through the clinic.

“Huffman correctly argues that haphazard record keeping alone does not equate to illegal distribution,” wrote Donald. “But her other admissions support the inference that both the pills distributed from Tri-State and those additional pills prescribed are attributable to Huffman’s crime of maintaining premises for the purpose of unlawfully distributing controlled substances.”

The court noted Huffman admitted that the Tri-State clinic was known locally as a “pill mill” and that local pharmacies had stopped filling prescriptions from it.

“This is the entire reason she opened the Tri-State dispensary,” the appellate panel concluded. “The court would have been justified in concluding that all two millions pills were attributable to Huffman. It was certainly justified in its conclusion that she is responsible for ‘at least one million’ units.”

The court of appeals also determined Huffman’s challenge of the procedural and substantive reasonableness of her sentence was without merit.

Huffman argued that the district court failed to consider her age and health when imposing her sentence but the appellate panel found that the court was not required to do so.

“First, her age of 58 years old is not ‘unusual’ when viewed alone or when viewed in combination with her health,” wrote Donald. “Huffman is not elderly and, as the district court noted, her poor health is likely attributable to her addictions, not to her age.”

Huffman countered that an older defendant is less likely to re-offend but the panel held that the record indicated an adequate “consideration of Huffman’s personal characteristics” was made by the district court when it determined her sentence.

“Huffman’s sentence was not procedurally unreasonable,” Donald said. “Nor has she overcome the presumption that her within-guidelines sentence is substantively unreasonable.”

The Sixth Circuit affirmed Huffman’s sentence as imposed by the district court.

Circuit Judge David McKeague and Judge David Lawson, sitting by designation, concurred.

The case is cited United States v. Huffman, Case No. 12-3213.

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