Partner Ryan L. O’Neill of Riker Danzig’s White Collar Criminal Defense and Investigations Group was tapped by Law360 to discuss the current state of prescriber prosecutions under the Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”) and the varying lower court interpretations of the Supreme Court’s holding in Ruan v. United States. In the article, “Supreme Court’s Opioid Edict Spawns ‘Troubling’ Divisions,” Ryan said that disputes over the sufficiency of indictments reflect that "Ruan was less than clear on what the government needs to plead at the outset.” She said that requiring indictments to specify that unauthorized conduct occurred knowingly or unintentionally is generally “an easy fix for the government to implement in its pleadings, though certainly a check on their proofs going in.” The article also emphasized that Ruan naturally had a significant impact on jury instructions in CSA cases. Ryan stated that "prosecutors chose cases wisely," but that Ruan's changes to jury instructions will hammer home the importance of prudent prosecutions. "The new jury instructions won't impact nine out of 10 of the CSA cases the government decides to prosecute," she said. "The new instructions should, however, police bad prosecutions of good physicians doing their best."
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