A physician dubbed the “Candy Man” for allegedly writing illegal prescriptions for large amounts of narcotics, a practice that prosecutors say led to 20 patient deaths, was allowed Wednesday to withdraw his guilty plea.
U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney allowed Julio Gabriel Diaz to get out of his guilty plea based on his argument that he received ineffective counsel from his prior attorney, Michael Guisti. Diaz is now scheduled to go on trial in May at the federal courthouse in Santa Ana.
At a July 3 hearing, Guisti argued that Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Wolf told him that his client could get probation for his guilty plea in January of this year to 11 out of 88 felony counts. Diaz admitted 10 counts of distributing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose and one count of distributing controlled substances to a minor.
In an interview with City News Service today, Guisiti accused Wolf of lying about what was discussed regarding the plea deal.
“Basically, the prosecutor lied,” Guisti alleged. “She told me before the plea agreement that she thought probation was a possibility.”
In a subsequent conversation with Wolf, Guisti said he noted that even if his client received the minimum of one year, he had already amassed credit for that time served.
“And she said, ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ ” Guisti said.
Guisti said at the July hearing that he was unaware federal prosecutors would raise the issue of the 20 deaths linked to the Santa Barbara physician’s prescriptions at sentencing.
“My understanding was she said, ‘Well, we can argue the (drug) quantities. And you never know, your client may get straight probation on this,”‘ Guisti said.
Carney said at the July hearing that it was clear the defendant faced up to 200 years in federal prison.
“I told him I’m not going to sentence him to 200 years, but I didn’t know how far below 200 years I was going to go,” Carney said.
Guisti argued that his client was never charged with the overdose deaths, but Carney said that did not matter.
“If the deaths can be linked to the prescriptions for medication that was not medically necessary, I feel under the law I must — I don’t think it’s discretionary — I must consider that,” Carney said.
At the July hearing, Wolf denied her office ever offered probation.
“Probation was never an issue from the get-go,” the prosecutor said. “It specifically states, and Mr. Diaz was advised at his change-of-plea hearing, that there is a mandatory minimum sentence that the court must impose of one year. I would never have represented, when there is a mandatory minimum sentence, that probation was given the remotest of possibility because it was an impossibility.”
In Wolf’s motion objecting to the withdrawal of the guilty plea, the prosecutor argued, “Bad advice about the length of a sentence rarely supports a finding of ineffective assistance of counsel.”
Wolf planned to argue for a 14-year prison sentence for the defendant.
Diaz’s new attorney, Kate Corrigan, alleges her client received “totally deficient” legal representation by Guisti.
“Now Mr. Diaz will have the opportunity to exercise his rights to review the discovery and make informed decisions,” Corrigan said.
Corrigan did not rule out the possibility of trying to strike another plea deal.
In the plea deal, Diaz said he doled out narcotics such as oxycodone, methadone, hydrochodone, alprazolam, fentanyl and hydromorphone in 2009 and 2010.
— City News Service