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April 27, 2007
What was Dr. Hurwitz's motive?
The NY Times' John Tierney, who has done an outstanding job of covering the sad case of Dr. William Hurwitz, provides this insightful post on the utter lack of a motive for Dr. Hurwitz to commit the crime for which he is being prosecuted:
Prosecutors charged that Dr. William Hurwitz was in a conspiracy with some of his patients to illegally distribute drugs, but there was no evidence that the patients had shared the profits when they resold the painkillers he prescribed. The only money he got was from the medical fees he charged. The prosecutors tried to portray his practice as a lucrative operation, and him as a doctor motivated by greed. This is a bit hard to square with what the jury heard about his background. which included stints in the Peace Corps and the Veterans Administration. And it’s really hard to square with his bank account.In 2003, before the charges in this case had even been brought against him, authorities seized Dr. Hurwitz’s assets. (That’s standard procedure in drug cases like this, and one more reason why doctors have such a hard time mounting a defense.) There wasn’t much to seize. They took all his retirement savings — which amounted to less than $250,000. He was at that point 58 years old and had been practicing medicine for decades. . . .
“It’s so ridiculous to hear the prosecutor talk about this rich doctor,” Mrs. [Nilse] Quercia [Dr. Hurwitz's former wife] told me. “Except for that Keough account they seized, he had nothing but debts and a 1990 Subaru.” His subsequent legal expenses, she said, were paid by friends and relatives and by the law firms now representing him pro bono.
In my experience, when a prosecutor must fabricate a motive for the white collar criminal act that is being prosecuted, it's a pretty darn good indication that a lack of prosecutorial discretion is behind the decision to pursue the charges in the first place.
Posted by Tom at April 27, 2007 4:20 AM
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