Doctor gets 30 years to life in fatal overdoses
Hsiu- Ying Tseng of Rowland Heights is remorseful in court.
A Rowland Heights doctor was sentenced Friday to 30 years to life in prison for the murders of three of her patients who fatally overdosed, ending a landmark case that some medical experts say could reshape how doctors nationwide handle prescriptions.
The sentence came after a Los Angeles jury last year found Dr. Hsiu- Ying “Lisa” Tseng guilty of second- degree murder — making her the f irst doctor in the U. S. convicted of murder for overprescribing drugs, the district attorney’s office said.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli told a packed downtown courtroom that the 46- year- old former general practitioner blamed patients, pharmacists and other physicians rather than taking responsibility for her own actions.
“It seems to be an attempt to put the blame on someone else,” he said. “Very irresponsible.”
Tseng, wearing blue jail scrubs, apologized to the victims’ families, her family and “medical society.”
“I’m really terribly sorry,” she said before addressing victims’ relatives in court. “I have been and forever will be praying for you. May God bless all of you and grant comfort to all who have been affected by my actions.”
April Rovero, whose son, Joey, died after mixing alcohol with Xanax and oxycodone he had obtained from Tseng, sat expressionless as she listened to Tseng’s f irst public expression of remorse.
“It feels too late,” Rovero said outside the courtroom. “But it was better to hear something than nothing.”
Rovero, who after her son’s death founded the National Coalition Against Prescription Drug Abuse, praised the judge’s decision.
“Justice has been served,” she said.
Tseng’s mother, who was standing nearby, clutched at her chest and wiped tears from her eyes.
“It’s too much, too much,” she said. “My daughter is a good person.”
Tseng’s prosecution came on the heels of a dramatic long- term jump in overdoses.
Between 1999 and 2011, deaths from painkillers quadrupled — a shift that coincided with a spike in the number of prescriptions pharmacies were dispensing for such drugs. By 2009, overdoses involving painkillers helped drug fatalities outpace traffic accidents as a cause of death. And in 2011, the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared an epidemic.
The crisis had long been blamed on pharmacy robberies, teenage pill poppers and the “black market.” But a series of stories in the Los Angeles Times in 2012 showed that physicians played an important role in prescription drug overdoses.
A Times analysis of 3,733 fatalities found that drugs prescribed by physicians to patients caused or contributed to nearly half the deaths.
Federal and local authorities have increased efforts to crack down on physicians suspected of overprescribing drugs, and Tseng is among a small but growing number of doctors to be charged with murder for prescribing painkillers that killed patients. A Florida doctor was acquitted of firstdegree murder in September.
Some fear that Tseng’s conviction will make doctors hesitant to prescribe potent painkillers to patients who need them.
Attorney Peter Osinoff, who represented Tseng before the state medical board, told the judge during Friday’s hearing that the doctor no longer represents a danger to society because she surrendered her medical license in 2012. The trial had already had a “deterrent effect” on other doctors and has captured the medical community’s attention, he said.
“More primary care physicians no longer accept or treat chronic pain patients in their practice,” he told the judge.
Outside the courtroom, Osinoff said Tseng’s prosecution has had a negative effect on physicians and patients.
“The doctors are scared out of their minds,” he said. “The pendulum has swung so far. The people who need [ pain medication] can’t get it now.”
Some medical experts have echoed his concerns since Tseng was charged in 2012.
“When you use the word ‘ murder,’ ” said Dr. Peter Staats, president of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, “of course it’s going to have a chilling effect.”
Though he doesn’t believe prosecution is the solution, Staats said, he knows the medical f ield needs to make changes. “Deaths are occurring because there are too many opioids being prescribed,” he said.
During Tseng’s trial, Deputy Dist. Atty. John Niedermann told jurors that there were “red f lags” in her prescribing habits.
More than a dozen times, the prosecutor said, a coroner’s or law enforcement of- f icial called with the same stark message: “Your patient has died.” Tseng’s prescribing habits, Niedermann said, remained unchanged.
In a four- page written statement submitted to the judge before her sentencing, Tseng brought up the same point.
“I terribly regret that even after learning of the overdoses, I did not investigate my prescribing practices to see if they played a role,” she said, adding that she doesn’t believe she was ever properly trained in addiction medicine or pain management.
“I told myself that my patients’ conduct was beyond my control,” she wrote. Most of what she learned about pain management, she said, came after DEA agents and medical board officials raided her office in 2010.
In the letter, Tseng said that she now realizes that personal problems — undi- agnosed depression, hoarding and difficulty juggling work and taking care of her children — interfered with her abilities to be a good physician.
“I was not the doctor I should have been for the patients who came to me,” she wrote. “I know that being remorseful for my failures as a doctor and as a person does not reverse time or does not help the families heal their grief.... No words can properly describe the sadness.”
During the trial, Niedermann told jurors that Tseng wrote a man’s name on prescriptions so his wife could obtain twice as many pills, openly referred to her patients as “druggies” and falsified medical records once she realized that she was under investigation.
Her motivation, Niedermann said, was f inancial. Between 2007, when Tseng joined the Rowland Heights clinic where her husband worked, and 2010, tax returns show that their office made $ 5 million, he said.
Tseng was convicted of murder for the deaths of Vu Nguyen, 28, of Lake Forest; Steven Ogle, 25, of Palm Desert; and Joey Rovero, 21, an Arizona State University student who prosecutors say traveled more than 300 miles with friends from Tempe, Ariz., to obtain prescriptions from Tseng at her Rowland Heights clinic.
The jury also found Tseng guilty on more than a dozen illegal- prescribing counts. She won’t be eligible for parole until she is in her 70s.