Recent editorials from Florida newspapers:
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May 23
The South Florida Sun Sentinel on the prison sentences for “pill mill” doctors:
Without so-called doctors like Cynthia Cadet and Joseph Castronuovo, South Florida’s illegal prescription painkiller industry could not have ravaged this area and other parts of the country. They deserve the criminal convictions that a federal appeals court last week upheld.
Cadet and Castronuovo worked for the worst of the pill mill operators - twin brothers Christopher and Jeff George. They ran four illegal pain clinics in Broward and Palm Beach counties, and needed doctors who had dispensing licenses and a willingness to pretend that the clinics were legitimate businesses.
According to court documents, Cadet prescribed about 21,000 oxycodone pills and 3,600 Xanax pills - in a single day. The Drug Enforcement Agency said Cadet wrote nearly 900,000 oxycodone prescriptions between 2008 and 2010, when she worked for the Georges. Federal authorities said Castronuovo, who worked only part-time, wrote nearly 330,000 painkiller prescriptions over the same period. Those are not numbers any honest physician would associate with a credible medical practice.
Given all the charges they faced, Cadet and Castronuovo could consider themselves lucky. They were accused of contributing to the deaths of patients - six in Cadet’s case and two in Castronuovo’s - racketeering and money laundering. A Palm Beach County federal jury, however, convicted them only on the money laundering charges. U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra sentenced Cadet to 6 1/2 years and Castronuovo to 18 months.
Yet the doctors challenged their convictions. They raised several legal points, but also made the absurd argument that they didn’t know the true nature of the Georges’ business.
Really? These doctors didn’t catch on, even though to get their paychecks, they had to sign forms stating “I did not see anything illegal happen or do anything illegal at the office?” They didn’t suspect anything when the Georges would pay them in cash? Cadet wasn’t worried when Christopher George told her that the clinic prescribed pills for those who “allege to be in pain” and nothing else? In its unanimous ruling, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals noted Castronuovo’s testimony that he continued to work while knowing that the clinics were illegal. He referred to patients as “junkies” and “pillbillies.”
To understand the latter term, you have to understand the extent of what Cadet and Castronuovo helped to enable.
Roughly 30 former employees of the clinics took plea deals. They testified that some “patients” came from Appalachia to buy massive amounts of pills. These addicts then resold the pills to dealers, who created many more painkiller addicts far from South Florida. The clinics stored cash in garbage cans. Surveillance cameras captured what Marra called “the chaos, the madness that was going on.”
That chaos and madness may have harmed many people, but it paid off for Cadet and Castronuovo. To prove the money laundering charges, prosecutors had to show that the doctors made at least $10,000 from “monetary transactions affecting interstate commerce in criminally derived property.” Castronuovo was paid $164,000. Cadet, who had been a Broward County emergency room doctor, received $1.2 million.
As the appellate judges wrote, “the evidence was sufficient for a rational juror to conclude” that Cadet and Castronuovo knew that they were making money from an illegal business. Cadet especially would have known the difference between an ER waiting room and one at the Georges’ clinic in Lake Worth, where she worked. Castronuovo worked at the clinic in West Palm Beach. The judges also dismissed the doctors’ claim that Marra coerced the jurors by asking them to continue deliberating when they were deadlocked on the money laundering charge.
Castronuovo sought leniency at sentencing because of his age - he’s now 77 - and poor health. Cadet asked for probation so she could raise her two children. Marra correctly didn’t go along, because the community damage Cadet and Castronuovo did outweighs any plea for mercy.
The appeals court wrote in the first paragraph of its opinion: “The clinics’ operations depended on doctors, like Defendants, who were licensed to prescribe and dispense narcotics.” From the pill mills has come the heroin epidemic that is South Florida law enforcement’s new challenge.
Cadet and Castronuovo took an oath to do no harm. Other doctors who worked in the pill mills have accepted the consequences of violating that oath. Cadet and Castronuovo now must do the same.
Online: https://www.sun-sentinel.com/
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May 24
The Bradenton Herald on hurricane precautions:
The official beginning of hurricane season lurks only days away, and here we are blessed with a decade free of any major storm. Hurricane preparedness seems almost quaint after such a long spell of quiet skies, but complacency still ranks as the enemy of survival.
Got an evacuation plan? Know where the nearest shelter is? What about pets? And family living elsewhere in the county? Is your home in a flood zone? Got a survival kit packed with food, water and more?
The early forecasts for hurricane season predict close to the average - a dozen named storms making landfall along the U.S. coastline or in the Caribbean. The odds of a major storm, defined as one with sustained winds of 111 mph or higher, slamming the United States are only 50 percent. So say the scientists at Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science, the bellwether of hurricane projections now in its 33rd year. The hurricane total does not include Alex, which formed in January - outside the normal June-through-November storm season.
The CSU team put the chances of a major hurricane hitting the U.S. East Coast - including peninsula Florida - at 30 percent, one percentage point lower than the average for the last century. On the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle westward to Brownsville, that figure is 29 percent.
Furthermore, the university report stated that the current weakening of El Niño is likely to transition to either neutral or La Niña conditions by the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. While the tropical Atlantic is relatively warm, the far North Atlantic is quite cold, the report states, making atmospheric conditions less conducive to hurricane formation and intensity.
How accurate is the CSU team? “We have correctly predicted by early April above- or below-average seasons in 27 out of 34 hindcast years (79,” the report written by Philip J. Klotzbach states.
The Weather Channel expects the most active season since 2012 - with 14 named storms, eight hurricanes and three major storms hurricanes in the forecast.
None of this matters one iota. A single powerful storm striking a community - think Manatee County and neighboring environs - will wreak havoc. In 2004, Hurricane Charley ripped a chilling path of destruction through Punta Gorda and Arcadia.
The last hurricane to batter Florida came the following year, on Oct. 24, 2005, when Wilma made landfall. The storm turned out to be the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic basin. Part of the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, two other storms joined Wilma on the list of the six most intense Atlantic hurricanes ever - along with No. 4 Rita and No. 6 Katrina. Plus, Wilma was the 22nd storm, 13th hurricane, fourth Category 5 storm and second-most destructive hurricane of the 2005 season.
That can happen again. As with every hurricane season, coastal residents would be wise to recognize that just one hurricane making landfall locally makes for an active storm season. Just one. Like Hurricane Andrew, a catastrophic beast that crippled South Florida during the slow storm season of 1992. The Category 5 monster slammed into the Sunshine State in August as the first hurricane of that season and only the fourth tropical cyclone. Winds peaked at 175 mph and heavy rain reached almost 14 inches in one place. Andrew caused about $25 billion in damage and 44 fatalities in Florida alone.
History should never be forgotten.
Manatee County’s population is surging. Home sales are spiking. Bradenton stands at No. 6 among the fastest-growing Florida cities. More and more people live in harm’s way - especially those with homes along waterfronts and other flood zones. Newcomers should be especially attuned to the warnings from emergency management officials and other community leaders.
Experts call the lack of hurricanes hitting the United States over the decade -an unprecedented streak - simply a matter of luck. Luck eventually runs out. It’s only a question of when.
Don’t be lulled into a false sense of safety. Preparedness does not require a monumental effort. Most people already possess many elements of a storm survival kit. Flashlights and batteries, candles and waterproof matches, duct tape and a pocketknife are among those items likely to be already around the house. One gallon of water per person per day is recommended, with filling empty and cleaned 2-liter soda bottles a cheap option. Plenty of nonperishable food and a can opener should be set aside, too. Cash, travelers checks and vital documents (birth certificates, passports, insurance policies and property records, to name some) should be easy to reach should an evacuation be ordered.
Online: https://www.bradenton.com/
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May 24
The Ledger of Lakeland on the death penalty in Florida:
We previously have noted in this space, including as recently as two months ago, that many good arguments exist for ending the death penalty in Florida once and for all.
As must occur when a life hangs in the balance, we accommodate precautions built into death cases that make them exorbitantly expensive and time-consuming. That means, for instance, allowing Death Row convicts to file seemingly endless appeals, often a frustrating, soul-draining process for a victim’s loved ones.
We also know that sometimes the judicial system mucks it up. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 26 Florida inmates sentenced to die have been exonerated, most among the states that collectively have freed 156 innocent people from Death Row since 1973.
Despite those valid reasons, opponents of capital punishment have made little headway in persuading lawmakers to stop this practice, nor do they seem willing to try to convince voters that we should ban the death penalty through a state constitutional amendment.
Yet, based on recent news reports, they nonetheless seem to be winning.
Earlier this year the Legislature had to “fix” the death penalty after the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled 8-1 that Florida’s process was unconstitutional. The high court found the method was flawed because the trial judge, and not the jury, determined the reasons why a convicted murderer qualified for the ultimate punishment.
State lawmakers thought they addressed that issue by amending the law during the 2016 session. The new statute mandated that the jury must unanimously agree on at least one factor presented by prosecutors in arguing for a death sentence. Then, if jurors reach that point, at least 10 of them must vote for execution.
In early May, though, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch became the first state judge to rule that was not good enough.
The judge balked at the idea of a super-majority vote for death. “A decedent cannot be more or less dead. An expectant mother cannot be more or less pregnant. And a jury cannot be more or less unanimous,” the judge wrote in his ruling supporting first-degree murder defendant Karon Gaiter’s claim that the new sentencing scheme was still unconstitutional. “Every verdict in every criminal case in Florida requires the concurrence, not of some, not of most, but of all jurors - every single one of them.”
Then last week, we heard from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which announced it would not sell to states its drugs that could become ingredients for carrying out executions. Pfizer thus aligned itself with roughly 20 U.S. and European drug manufacturers that were driven by some high-profile botched lethal injections to prohibit sales of their wares to death penalty states.
We thus may be witnessing the demise of Florida’s death penalty, yet let’s consider who is leading us there.
Except for Justice Samuel Alito, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the fact that Florida judges had acted on a jury’s recommendation. Judge Hirsch dismissed the fact that the jury must unanimously convict a murderer before determining a death sentence - the only criminal cases, by the way, in which a jury, and not a judge like Hirsch, hands down the punishment. Pfizer dismissed the fact in 2011 it was sued for $2 billion by the Nigerian government - and settled for $75 million - because it tested, without authorization, an anti-meningitis drug that killed 11 children.
Yes, lawmakers can probably fix the death penalty again next year to require a jury’s unanimous vote to suit defense-minded judges like Hirsch. And Florida, like other states, could look to compounding pharmacies or the black market for the lethal drugs, or revert to a less “humane” execution method, such as reviving the electric chair.
But each incremental adjustment will undoubtedly make it more complicated to sentence a convicted killer to Death Row.
Many among us may cheer that development as progress toward justice, but it will be hollow.
That’s because those who oppose capital punishment will gain ground without widespread, broad-based consensus of the people or their elected representatives, and without regard for, or acknowledgement of, the families and friends of victims whose lives were taken from them in the most brutal circumstances.
Online: https://www.theledger.com/
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