Can Narcotics Turn Free Speech Into Obstruction of Justice?

As Radley Balko and I have both noted here, Tanya Treadway, an assistant U.S. attorney in Kansas, is trying to bully pain treatment activist Siobhan Reynolds into silence by threatening to prosecute her for "obstruction of justice," based on Reynolds's advocacy work for a local physician accused of writing inappropriate painkiller prescriptions. In a Forbes.com column published today, civil liberties lawyer (and Reason contributor) Harvey Silverglate offers some damning details about Treadway's harassment:

When Reynolds wrote op-eds in local newspapers and granted interviews to other media outlets, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway attempted to impose a gag order on her public advocacy. The district judge correctly denied this extraordinary request.

Undeterred, Treadway filed on March 27 a subpoena demanding a broad range of documents and records, obviously hoping to deter the peripatetic pain relief advocate, or even target her for a criminal trial of her own. Just what was Reynolds' suspected criminal activity?

"Obstruction of justice" is the subpoena's listed offense being investigated, but some of the requested records could, in no possible way, prove such a crime. The prosecutor has demanded copies of an ominous-sounding "movie," which, in reality, is a PRN-produced documentary showing the plight of pain physicians. Also requested were records relating to a billboard Reynolds paid to have erected over a busy Wichita highway. It read: "Dr. Schneider never killed anyone." Suddenly, a rather ordinary exercise in free speech and political activism became evidence of an obstruction of justice.

A federal judge is expected to rule tomorrow on Reynolds' motion to block the subpoea as a violation of her First Amendment rights.

Comments

[Joe M]

Can some please stop the ride? I'd like to get off now.

[brotherben]

I have chronic severe constant pain from L-1 down to my toenails. I love my pain management doc most of the time. I appreciate the difficult tightrope he is on. I have formed an opinion of Ms. Treadway. I can't put it in print here for fear that such threats talk might get me the banhammer.

[John-David]

I'll contribute to a billboard damning that judge if he rules in favor of the government.

[Mister DNA]

If the judge's decision doesn't include the phrase, "Yo, fuck Tanya Treadway," he should be recalled from the bench.

[DX]

What a cunt. And I don't use that word lightly.

[John-David]

OT, but in a DKos diary on Obama's "speech to the students", I found this interesting bit taken directly from the Department of Education's "Menu of Classroom Activities" sent to teachers.

As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:
What is the President trying to tell me?
What is the President asking me to do?
What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?

There's something in that last question that really makes me wonder about the ability of the DoE to have any control of education.

[Medic 001]

I'm with Joe...please stop the ride, its making me sick...oh wait...soon that too will be a crime.

[hmm]

Great. Just fucking great. I have lived a life trying hard not to wish ill upon others. This Tanya woman tests the boundaries of such a principle. If she had to endure incurable crippling pain from this day on maybe she would see things a little differently. Then maybe the point of free speech and the fact some people are in pain will sink in.

Stupid fucking people.

[Nipplemancer]

Steve Smith should pay her a visit.

[Tricky Prickears]

...in no possible way, prove such a crime.

Obstruction of justice is such a bullshit charge it's laughable. It's used two ways by law enforcement:

1. To fuck with people.
a)If you piss off a cop, for whatever reason, he can use it as an excuse to send you to the county jail for a day or two. On the first court date, it gets tossed by the judge (this happened to yours truly, but that was a long time ago).

b)If you are a witness in a persecution, I mean prosecution, and you refuse to testify the prosecutor can use it to make your life miserable by rooting through all of your financials and personal background, and question your friends, family, co-workers and employer.

2. Law enforcement will use it to add to a list of charges to make the list longer. Sort of like if are charged with DUI when you plowed through a group of people, they'll add "broken tailight" to the list of charges, along with vehicular homicide, speeding, failure to yield, texting while driving, you get the picture.

But with the case here, and 2b above, the prosecutor runs the risk of prosecutorial misconduct. However, proving prosecutorial misconduct, is about as difficult as proving obstruction of justice.

[anonymous]

What line does a prosecutor have to cross in terms of malicious, blatantly bullshit prosecution for a judge to say "yo bitch, you're fired." Where is the Nifong event horizon?

[MNG]

Terrible, just terrible. Let's hope the judge does the right thing...

[Pooblicus]

In nearly all circumstances, prosecutors have absolute immunity for any actions they take in their official duty. Even malicious actions are generally protected.

[KenK]

This is the kind of crap that makes me feel like a flaming liberal in Kansas, while I'm seen as a right-wing conservative by my old college buddies on the coasts.

[matth]

Once the "Obstruction of Justice" charge is thrown out, I fully expect "Disorderly Conduct" to be next on the list of harassment options.

[robc]

Can someone explain the Steve Smith references that keep getting made?

Why, all of a sudden, did everyone start caring about the WR for the Carolina Panthers?

[Joe M]

Ah, Disorderly Conduct, a police officer's best friend.

[Groovus Maximus]

This is THOROUGHLY disgusting! I'd sure as hell would like to know the rationale for "inappropriate prescriptions". I am am more than familiar with the DEA, as that is one of the "checks and balances" looking over the shoulder of every MD and DO (and ARNP's/CRNA's, nurses that have prescriptive authority). But for pain management specialists (usually anesthesiologists) who do write large numbers of scheduled drug scripts to have this much intrusion is ridiculous IMHO.
And to get a supoena to try and quiet someone who advocates for effective PX management is beyond contempt. I'm sure there are a few PX specialists that are crooked in their practice, but that is for a state board to decide. This is why government should not be involved with medicine. Courts expecially, excepting cases of malpractice, negligence and flat out unethical/illegal activity, i.e. script fraud. If this phys was engaging in any of the above, fine, prosecute. Other than that stay out of the doctor/patient relationship. Most patients, even those taking narcotics for long periods of time, are not addicts (around 1% of the population do). The disease process is pain, and narcotics are an appropriate course of med therapy. Courts need to stop treating docs like criminals for doing their job.

I don't wish ill on others, but if this prosecutor was dealing with chronic severe PX, like brotherben, I suspect she would be singing a much different tune.

[Groovus Maximus]

*do=are

[Nightfall Ugg Boots]

Hi there,
Ugh, I liked! So clear and positively.
Have a nice day

[The Libertarian Guy]

Your War on Drugs, hard at work protecting you from yourself. Because you're too stoopid to do it.

[John C. Randolph]

You know, if we had the rule of law in this country, this kind of behavior would land her ass in jail for depriving a person of their civil rights under color of authority.

Unfortunately, to prosecute a federal apparatchik on such a charge, you've got to get another apparatchik to stand up for justice. Not bloody likely these days.

-jcr

[BOB MARLEY]

YOU THINK YOUR LIVIN IN HEAVEN,BUT YOUR REALLY LIVIN IN HELL.

[DWCarkuff]

Change we can believe in!!! As a long time pain sufferer who has been on the verge of ending it all more than a couple of times you have no idea how many times I have wished my pain issue, even just for a couple weeks, on the bureaucrats who have exploited the drug war hysteria for their own gain and at the expense of many of us who are just trying to survive.

[Russ 2000]

Tanya Treadway - basically the reason I support the death penalty as long as it only applies to government employees.

[Ian MacLeod]

I've been with PRN for a couple of years now. Just by being there, making suggestions, educating and providing moral support, we've saved a lot of people who came to us feeling suicidal. And then there are creatures like Treadway, supporting the DEA as it runs roughshod over all pain management in the country, and taking over the regulation of pain management from a cops standpoint: drugs+(money changing hands)=CRIME. What one single doctor does in honestly trying to practice medicine with compassion, following the Medical Standard of Care (what the textbooks, verified by medical scientific research, say to do), using opiates properly, the results can be miraculous, but they never know what will get them "investigated" (read: 'set up') by the DEA and imprisoned for decades. Doctors and the DEA spent a couple of years working out standards and acceptable practices with the DEA, and when they tried to use those standards to defend a doctor who had done nothing illegal but was again under attack, by the very next day the DEA had pulled those agreements and reassurances off of their web site and said, "There are a few errors in it." That doctor is still in prison.

Every time they destroy another doctor, another clinic (and to be accused is to be destroyed - ask Arthur Anderson), they leave hundreds or even thousands of patients suddenly abandoned to not just their pain and a potentially fatal withdrawal, but they are also abandoned completely to a medical community too afraid of the DEA to even treat their heart conditions, glaucoma, diabetes - If some give up and, God forbid, decide NOT to survive it all this time, plus having to start over yet again, to go beg for treatment that should be their right, lose their jobs or ability to rest, to function, to be a father, mother, a spouse, a lover again and take their own lives, that too is laid at the doctor's doorstep for "addicting the patient to those horrible opiates"! Addiction and physical dependence are always conflated, witnesses are blackmailed, bribed and forced to lie on the stand, and even when this comes out later, the conviction is still upheld! With as many as seventy million of us out here, and yes, I'm one too, for 25 years now, they'll let us all die of the damage caused by uncontrolled pain rather than allow us the medication we need to live again, to have a life again. They're destroying the practice of pain management in this country, even knowing - it's the government's own study, after all - that the vast portion of prescrition drugs on the street don't come from pain patients or doctors. They're routinely stolen in bulk from pharmacies, factories, shipping companies and warehouses; the DEA ignores this activity. People nailed down in poverty and unable to function and the doctors who are treating them, making very little money because these people are POOR, are so much easier as targets than real criminals. And the busts look just as good, with the help of a compliant MSM that never allows the truth into their articles or on TV, on the nightly news as DEA agents break down (open) clinic doors and handcuff a waiting room full of sick people with their faces in the waiting room carpet, guns to their heads. Hey, who knows but that one of those toddlers might haul an AK-47 out of their diaoers and start blasting away. "Those "horrible drugs can do terrible things to our children, you know." And may God help anyone who dares try to defend one of their targets - they'll get her, too! First Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Constitution? Forget them - the DEA has the guns, and THE DOJ IS THE LAW. And we have no rights.

Welcome to my world, folks.

Ian MacLeod
Activist PRN, Nonprofit, Nonpartisan, 501(C)(3) Corporation.
Veteran, Disabled, Chronic Intractable Pain Patient, 25 years
Oathkeeper.
Primum, non nocere!
Illegitimis non carborundum!

[Harry Cheerios]

Perhaps with all your experience, Ian, you could learn how to write...

[New Balance 420fashionworld]

obviously hoping to deter the peripatetic pain relief advocate, or even target her for a criminal trial of her own. Just what was Reynolds' suspected criminal activity?