Judge grants local doctor's request to withdraw guilty pleas
Oct. 13—A federal judge granted a local doctor's motion to withdraw guilty pleas on numerous counts of distributing controlled substances while keeping his guilty plea in a single indictment.
Court documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma show Dr. Nelson Onaro, who owned and operated the Medical Clinic of McAlester, originally pleaded guilty last year to six counts of distribution of controlled substance.
U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White granted the request for five of the six counts after attorneys for Onaro argued in June the doctor now has an affirmative defense after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in Ruan v. United States.
Onaro's attorney argued the doctor would have never pleaded guilty to the charges if he had been able to sit in front of a jury and explain "regardless of some random California-based physicians' opinion" that he "genuinely thought he was treating his patients alleged pain by and through his training."
"They told him they were in pain; Dr. Onaro then prescribed pain relieving medicine," his attorneys wrote. "Dr. Onaro did nothing but act as a doctor."
Federal prosecutors did not object to the change of plea in five of the six counts and asked the judge to grant the motion.
"The United States opposes the defendant's motion relating to his request to withdraw his guilty plea on count six," the prosecutors wrote in a motion. "Unlike counts one through five, in count six the defendant directly admitted that he presented a prescription to an individual 'with the understanding that C.L. would fill the prescription and bring the prescribed pills back to him for his personal use."'
Documents show Onaro agreed to keep his guilty plea on the single indictment with a new plea deal being created with new sentencing guidelines and modifications from the original plea deal that included all six counts.
A new separate superseding indictment containing the single count will be filed by the government.
"Upon completion of said new plea agreement and guidelines, parties request this court set a sentencing date at its discretion," a court document states.
Charging information against Onaro accuses him of distributing fentanyl, oxycodone, morphine, oxymorphone, and Adderall "outside the usual course of professional practice and without a legitimate purpose" between January 2018 and May 2019.
According to court documents, the combined converted drug weight for which Onaro is accountable for dispersing is 60.895 kilograms.
Contact Derrick James at djames@mcalesternews.com
