4 life terms for Chicago doctor in oxycodone drug deaths in Ohio

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FILE - This undated file photo released by the U.S. Marshals Service shows Dr. Paul Volkman, of Chicago. Lawyers for the Chicago doctor convicted of running a pill mill in southern Ohio want off the case, saying the doctor is too unhappy with them to continue. The request raises questions about the sentencing for Volkman on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2012, who faces 20 years in prison for causing the death of four patients who overdosed on pain pills. (AP Photo/U.S. Marshals Service, File)

Updated: March 16, 2012 8:12AM

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A Chicago doctor who prosecutors say dispensed more of the powerful painkiller oxycodone from 2003 to 2005 than any other physician in the country was sentenced Tuesday to four life terms in the overdose deaths of four patients.

Dr. Paul Volkman made weekly trips from Chicago to three locations in Portsmouth in southern Ohio and one in Chillicothe in central Ohio before federal investigators shut down the operations in 2006, prosecutors said. He was sentenced in federal court in Cincinnati.

“This criminal conduct had devastating consequences to the community Volkman was supposed to serve,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Adam Wright and Tim Oakley said in a court filing ahead of Tuesday’s hearing.

“Volkman’s actions created and prolonged debilitating addictions; distributed countless drugs to be sold on the street; and took the lives of numerous individuals who died just days after visiting him,” they said.

The 64-year-old Volkman fired his attorneys earlier this month and said he acted at all times as a doctor, not a drug dealer.

“The typical drug dealer does not care how much drugs a client buys, how often he buys, or what he does with his drugs,” Volkman said in a 28-page handwritten court filing Monday, maintaining that he did all those things and more for his patients.

Volkman was also handed prison terms ranging from 10 to 20 years on 13 other counts related to drug trafficking. He received five years for possessing a weapon while participating in drug trafficking.

He was also convicted of eight other distribution counts that prosecutors said resulted in fatal overdoses but didn’t leave enough evidence to convict him of the deaths.

One of the four patients whom Volkman was convicted of killing through an overdose was Steven Hieneman. He died on April 20, 2005, shortly after Volkman prescribed a combination of oxycodone, hydrocodone and other drugs, according to the 2007 indictment against Volkman.

“He was no more than a cash cow to them,” his mother, Paula Eastly, said Tuesday after the sentencing. “The week before he died he tried to commit suicide and they knew that, and they still seen him. So that’s how money-hungry they were.”

Eastly, 59, of Greenup, Ky., said she takes comfort in Volkman’s long sentence and the message it will send to other doctors who illegally prescribe pain pills.

“We cannot do anything about the past, but we can do something about the future,” she said.