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Still no verdict in Anna Nicole Smith prescription painkiller trial
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File photo: Anna Nicole Smith pictured at the World Music Awards at the Thomas Mack Convention Center on September 15, 2004 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Smith died of a drug overdose in 2007 in Florida.
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There’s still no verdict in the Los Angeles trial over the way the late actress and model Anna Nicole Smith got prescription painkillers. Two doctors and Smith’s longtime companion face a string of felony charges. The jury has been at it for 10 days.
Keep this in mind: this trial is not about Anna Nicole Smith’s death from an accidental overdose of painkillers nearly four years ago. It just seems like it is.
It’s about whether her companion and two doctors conspired to keep her doped up on prescription drugs. The companion, Howard K. Stern, faces nine felony charges related to getting painkillers for Smith. The doctors face six felony charges, among them prescribing a controlled substance to an addict.
If it’s been hard to reach a verdict, the jurors haven’t shown it since they’ve been out. They’ve sent the judge only one note – and that went out on the second day of deliberations. It asked how to link up verdicts on the charges of unlawfully prescribing a controlled substance.
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L.A. Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler – who filled in for the trial judge that day – said that if the doctors weren’t guilty of those charges, then Stern wasn’t either. Get verdicts for the docs, said Fidler – and Stern’s would follow. Presumably, the jury is working on that now.
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