A federal judge in Boston has partially overturned the convictions of  four former top executives of Insys Therapeutics, maker of powerful opioid Subsys.
US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs ruled on Tuesday to overturn two of the four convictions of Insys founder John Kapoor and three other former executives.
The overturned convictions were for alleged violations of the Controlled Substances Act and for alleged honest services fraud arising from the executives' part in marketing and selling Subsys. The synthetic opioid Subsys, which was intended for cancer pain management, was found to be highly addictive.
Accordiung to Judge Borroughs, the conduct of the pharmaceutical company and the defendants were "reprehensible" for trying to "financially incentivize" doctors to prescribe Subsys without regard for their patients' health. However, she found that the government was unable to prove key elements needed for the conviction of Kapoor, Richard Simon, Sunrise Lee, and Joseph Rowan.
The conviction of a fifth executive, Michael Gurry, in May of mail fraud and wire fraud, still stand.
Judge Burroughs wrote in her 85-page ruling: "although the evidence clearly shows that Defendants intended to try to sell as much Subsys as possible and wanted healthcare practitioners to prescribe it and to prescribe it at the higher and more expensive doses, there is not evidence sufficient to prove that Defendants specifically intended, much less intended beyond a reasonable doubt, that healthcare practitioners would prescribe Subsys to patients that did not need it or to otherwise abdicate entirely their role as healthcare providers."
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that from 1999 to 2017, nearly 400,000 people died from an overdose involving opioids, including prescription and illicit opioids.
Despite having the two convictions overturned, the four defendants will still face sentencing in January 2020 for their convictions on mail fraud and wire fraud charges.
