A physician portrayed by prosecutors as a “Dr. Feelgood” because he prescribed large amounts of prescription drugs to former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith said Friday that a jury’s decision to acquit him Thursday was a recognition that Smith had a “legitimate need” for the painkillers.
“It’s been a long ordeal of almost four years,” Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, a 42-year-old internist, said during an exclusive interview on TODAY. “It’s just absolute joy and relief, I suppose … I think the jury had all the evidence, which there was a lot of, and really saw there was a legitimate need.
“Anna Nicole Smith suffered chronic pain and several other medical conditions and required treatment,” Kapoor added.
Kapoor was acquitted after 13 days of deliberations, but Smith’s former lawyer/boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, and her psychiatrist, Khristine Eroshevich, did not fare so well. Both were convicted of felony conspiracy for using fake names to get Smith prescriptions for opiates and sedatives and could get as much as three years in prison when sentenced.
The charges against the three were unrelated to Smith’s 2007 overdose death in Florida. Playboy’s 1993 Playmate of the Year was just 39 when she died.
Crossing the line?
The evidence against Kapoor included photographs from a 2005 gay pride parade in West Hollywood in which he marched shirtless alongside Smith and was kissing her. Jurors also were shown passages from Kapoor’s own diary, in which he described “making out” with Smith and wondered whether he’d crossed a professional line with her.
That’s a page taken out of a personal journal of 800 pages,” Kapoor told TODAY co-anchor Meredith Vieira. “That was one afternoon at a charity event that certainly was taken out of context again and blown of proportion … It was a professional relationship with a patient and a doctor.”
Kapoor’s lawyer argued successfully during the trial that the pills Kapoor prescribed for Smith were part of a regimen he inherited from the doctors whose practice he took over. Smith suffered from migraines, spinal pain and other ailments that required pain management treatment, Kapoor said.
He told Vieira that the case only wound up becoming a criminal matter because of the notoriety surrounding Smith, whose life and death at a young age some have likened to Marilyn Monroe’s. Smith’s death spawned investigations in California, Florida and the Bahamas. Her death also touched off a tug-of-war over her remains and a paternity/custody battle between Stern and Larry Birkhead, who eventually was confirmed to be the father of Smith’s daughter, Dannielynn.
“It just happened to be that [Smith] was a public figure and the subject of tabloid fodder,” Kapoor said. “That became a jumping-off point for a lot of the circuslike atmosphere.”
Not out of the woods
Although he was acquitted of all charges, Kapoor isn’t out of the woods yet. He said he will try to rebuild his reputation and practice while waiting to find out what, if anything, a California board that regulates physicians may do concerning his license to practice medicine.
“Certainly there may be a further investigation by the medical board,” said Ellyn Garofalo, Kapoor’s attorney. “We are hoping the medical board will look at these verdicts and understand the evidence in the criminal matter … and forego any further proceedings with Dr. Kapoor.”
Stern and Eroshevich are due back in court in January. Under California law, each could ask the court for a new trial, or to reduce the convictions to misdemeanors.
Kapoor breathed a sigh of relief as the verdict was read.
