A Northern Kentucky dentist, who was sentenced to prison last year for prescribing opioids that prosecutors say led to a 24-year-old woman’s death, will get a new trial after a federal appeals court overturned his conviction.
Dr. Jay Sadrinia was sentenced in May 2024 to 20 years in prison after a jury in federal court in Covington found Sadrinia guilty of charges that include distribution of a controlled substance resulting in death.
In a rare ruling on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated 62-year-old Sadrinia’s convictions and sentence. The judges found that while there was sufficient evidence to support the jury’s verdict, the trial improperly allowed testimony it said was “intrinsic” to the offenses.
The opinion also states that U.S. District Judge David Bunning, who presided over Sadrinia’s trial, did not give any limiting instructions to the jury about how that testimony should be considered during deliberations.
The case surrounds the death of a patient at Sadrinia’s surgery practice, who underwent a procedure that Sadrinia performed himself.
Court filings state the woman died of an opioid overdose after Sadrinia prescribed painkillers twice in three days. She had three times the lethal amount of morphine in her system when the state medical examiner performed an autopsy.
The woman first visited Sadrinia’s office in July 2020. Court documents say Sadrinia prescribed her at least 30 oxycodone pills before the surgery.
After the surgery, according to the documents, Sadrinia prescribed even more oxycodone pills, then a few days after that, he prescribed morphine pills at the highest dosage. The pharmacy only partially filled the prescription because the number of pills exceeded state regulations.
On Aug. 28, 2020, Sadrinia saw the woman for the last time and prosecutors say Sadrinia questioned whether she had a history of drug abuse. While the appeals court’s ruling says Sadrinia didn’t prescribe anything during that visit, prosecutors wrote in a presentence filing that Sadrinia did write another prescription, but it wasn’t filled.
The woman died later that night and she was found lifeless in a patio chair by her family two days later. Police found empty oxycodone and morphine pill bottles inside her home.
Jurors heard evidence that the amount of morphine Sadrinia prescribed is typically given to patients for end-of-life care, not pain management in dental patients, and the prescribing exceeded the state’s three-day supply limit, court documents state.
“Given that timeline, a rational jury could have concluded that Sadrinia – who had practiced dentistry for 30 years – knew that the prescription he wrote … was beyond ‘the usual course of his professional practice,” the appeals court wrote.
However, the court took issue with how Bunning allowed the testimony of Sadrinia’s former employees to be used at trial.
Bunning admitted the employees’ testimony and ruled it was evidence “intrinsic” to the charged offenses, meaning it could be used as proof of the crimes Sadrinia was accused of, according to the court’s ruling.
Another dentist who worked at Sadrinia’s practice testified that more than a year before the patient’s death, he used her prescription pad to prescribe opioids while she was out of the country. His former office manager also testified that she warned Sadrinia that his prescribing “was going to kill someone.”
The appeals court found the testimony was not inextricably linked with the charged crimes and the trial court “abused its discretion” when it admitted the testimony as “intrinsic” evidence, the judges’ decision reads.
As part of the court’s decision, the case has been remanded to Bunning’s courtroom, where Sadrinia will once again stand trial for his patient’s overdose death. Sadrinia was originally set to be released from federal prison in May 2041.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Northern Kentucky dentist to have new trial in patient death case