Both sides focus on Anna Nicole Smith’s fame in drug trial’s closing arguments

In the end, the drug trial surrounding Anna Nicole Smith’s death came to revolve around the fame that trailed the late model and Playboy Playmate throughout her life.

The hope of landing in their famous patient’s inner circle was powerful enough to motivate doctors to whip out their prescription pads and write out orders for huge quantities of highly addictive drugs, prosecutors said.

Defense attorneys claimed that were it not for Smith’s celebrity, their clients would never have been charged in the first place. Prosecutors, they said, posthumously dragged Smith’s name through the mud by portraying her as a helpless addict.

“If Anna Nicole Smith was not a celebrity, Dr. [Sandeep] Kapoor would not be sitting here. If Anna Nicole Smith did not have the notoriety of Anna Nicole Smith, Dr. Kapoor would not be sitting here,” attorney Ellyn Garofalo, representing one of the doctors charged in the case, told jurors.

Deputy Dist. Atty. David Barkhurst, on the other hand, said Kapoor’s relationship with Smith was “facilitated by his prescription pad.”

The two-month criminal trial against Kapoor, who was Smith’s primary care physician, psychiatrist Khristine Eroshevich, and manager and companion Howard K. Stern came to a close late Friday. The jury is expected to begin deliberating Tuesday.

During the week-long closing arguments, attorneys pored through the final three, tumultuous years of Smith’s life, when the three are accused of illegally providing her with a constant stream of drugs. Smith died of a drug overdose in a Florida hotel room. The three are not charged with her death, but with prescribing to an addict and obtaining controlled substances through fraud.

Prosecutors said Smith was clearly an addict who turned to a cocktail of medications — including powerful opiates and sedatives — for the high, not for medical reasons. They cited testimony that she was so heavily drugged she would fall asleep while eating, and that while hospitalized for drug withdrawal, she rattled her IV lines to speed up the flow of her medication.

“She’s seeking the medications that she enjoys, that make her feel good,” Barkhurst said, arguing that Smith’s complaints of pain changed according to which doctor she was trying to get the medication from.

Kapoor, who became Smith’s doctor when he took over a practice from another physician in 2004, and Eroshevich, who was her next-door neighbor but later began writing prescriptions for Smith, were “feeding her addiction using their prescription pads,” Barkhurst said. Stern was the “common thread” allowing the excessive prescribing to continue, he claimed.

In giving Smith the medication she wanted, the doctors were motivated by Smith’s celebrity, prosecutors argued.

Eroshevich “went from next-door neighbor to the most important person in her life,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Renee Rose.

Defense attorneys contended that the medication was prescribed for a legitimate medical need arising from the chronic pain Smith suffered, as well as from the tragedies that marked the last years of her life, including her son Daniel’s death. They repeatedly emphasized to the jury that the law prevents prosecutors from “second-guessing” a doctor’s medical judgment.

“For a prosecutor ... for anybody to say your pain is not real, that’s just not right. Pain is as real as the person feeling it,” said Bradley Brunon, Eroshevich’s attorney.

The defense also strongly disputed allegations that the various aliases used on Smith’s medications, as well as prescriptions written in Stern’s name for Smith, constituted fraud, saying it was common practice to protect a celebrity’s privacy. Prosecutors told jurors the different names were an attempt to keep government regulators or pharmacists from realizing that all the medication was going to one person.

Stern’s attorney, Steven Sadow, ferociously attacked prosecutors, accusing them of purposely misleading jurors and creating false impressions. He contended that in showing a photo in which Smith had bruises under her eyes from a cosmetic procedure, they tried to imply Stern was abusive toward Smith.

Stern cared deeply for Smith and relied on doctors’ judgments about what medication she needed, Sadow told jurors.

“If Howard believed in good faith what the doctor was doing was lawful ... there is no agreement, there is no conspiracy,” he said.

Bryan A. Liang, a law professor at California Western School of Law who is also a doctor, said the trial was being closely followed because it is highly unusual for physicians to face criminal accountability rather than a civil malpractice lawsuit.

Smith’s high profile, he said, probably had much to do with the doctors’ decisions in prescribing to her, as well as the authorities’ decision to bring charges against physicians.

“Celebrities are in the public eye at all times, and their entourage too, which includes their physicians, who are going to be held accountable,” Liang said.

victoria.kim@latimes.com