Case ends for doc who prescribed drugs to Anna Nicole Smith

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A psychiatrist who prescribed drugs to Anna Nicole Smith under a false name put her legal troubles behind her Friday as a judge threw out one conviction and reduced another to a misdemeanor in the long-running legal saga years after the model’s overdose death.

Dr. Khristine Eroshevich, 67, was sentenced to a year of probation and fined $100 in the case, but a Los Angeles Superior Court judge stayed the term, which she already served when her case was being appealed.

The re-sentencing brings the case to an end for Eroshevich, leaving only Smith’s manager, Howard K. Stern, facing charges eight years after the former Playboy model and reality TV starlet died in Florida of an accidental overdose.

Eroshevich and Stern were convicted in 2010 of two counts of conspiring to obtain prescriptions under a false name and acquitted of several other charges. They were not charged with causing the death of Smith.

Prescriptions Eroshevich wrote for opiates, muscle relaxants and other drugs were found in the hotel room where Smith died, Deputy District Attorney Sean Carney said.

Judge Robert Perry tossed out the convictions after the trial, saying it was not unusual in the celebrity world for fake names to be used to protect privacy.

An appeals court reversed his ruling, leading to Friday’s resentencing.

Perry reduced one of the charges to a misdemeanor and dismissed the other because it was redundant. He said the doctor had no criminal record and didn’t have ill intent.

Carney objected to the reduction of the charge to a misdemeanor. He said a message needed to be sent to doctors who bend the laws for celebrities.

“It’s an epidemic of doctors prescribing to celebrities and celebrities dying because doctors won’t uphold their oath,” Carney said outside court. “Doctors are in a position of trust to protect patients, not to enable them to abuse drugs.”