Judge balks at doctor’s one-year plea deal
She delays action to examine options in overdose deaths.
WEST PALM BEACH — As a result of a rare plea deal, there was to be no question on Tuesday that former West Palm Beach doctor John Christensen would be sentenced to 12 months in prison for causing the overdose deaths of two patients.
All that changed when Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Dina Keever balked.
“The court doesn’t think this is an appropriate sentence,” she said, pointing out that the 65-year-old pleaded guilty in September to two counts of manslaughter and a charge of conspiracy to traffic in oxycodone. In exchange, some 70 drug-related charges were dropped.
Attorney Richard Lubin, who represents the former physician who once faced the death penalty, tried unsuccessfully to persuade Keever that she had no latitude. As part of the plea deal, she could not give Christensen more punishment than he had received from a federal judge. Since U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza last month handed Chris- t e n s e n a y e a r - l o n g s e n - tence on health care fraud charges in Orlando, Keever was bound to do the same, he said.
Keever didn’t share Lubin’s view. “I’m not quite sure the court is bound by it,” she said. Explaining she wanted to do more research, she reset Christensen’s sentencing hearing for Dec. 28. Christensen, who is free on bond at his home in PGA National, is to report to federal prison on Jan. 4.
When the deal was cut, Assistant State Attorney John Parnifiello told Keever he expected Christensen would receive a five-year sentence from the Orlando judge. In accepting the agreement, Keever made it clear that s h e ex p e c t e d t h e s a me, according to a transcript of the hearing.
However, Lubin said, the plea deal is “crystal clear.” In approving the agreement, Keever handed the reins to Mendoza. Even if she sentences Christensen to more than 12 months, it is likely he would be released after spending a year in federal prison.
“This sentence shall be served concurrently and run coterminously with the sentence he receives in his federal case,” Parnifiello told Keever in September. “That means that (Christensen’s) sentence shall terminate upon (his) release from federal prison if the state’s sentence has not otherwise been served in full.”
In other words, Keever could sentence Christensen to five years but, by virtue of the agreement, he would walk out of prison a free man after a year.
Ken Fusco, who blames Christensen for his 24-yearold son’s 2008 overdose death, came to the hearing to persuade Keever to punish the doctor severely. The plea deal shows the justice system isn’t fair, he said.
“T h e way t h e s y s t e m works is the more money you have the more justice you can buy,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”
Attorney David Spicer, who represented Fusco and two other families in wrongful death lawsuits against Christensen that were settled out of court, said he was glad Keever was reassessing the plea agreement. Christensen routinely handed patients at his A1A Health & Wellness Clinic on Broadway multiple prescriptions for large quantities of oxycodone, roxycodone, methadone and Xanax.
“Clearly there was no medical reason for giving the drugs the way he did,” Spicer said. Even a five-year sentence is too lenient, he said.
Christensen pleaded guilty to manslaughter in connection with the September 2007 overdose death o f F l o re n c e Gar re t t , 47, of West Palm Beach, and the August 2008 death of Pawel Staniszewski, 31, of Royal Palm Beach. He said he wasn’t admitting wrongdoing but simply wanted to put the legal wrangling behind him.
Lubin remained confident that the plea deal would stand. “The record is clear as to what the agreement is,” he said.