Medical Panel Accuses 2nd Don Simpson Physician

The state medical board has accused a second physician of overprescribing drugs to the late filmmaker Don Simpson, this time targeting a Santa Ana physician who officials say provided “large and frequent doses” of amphetamines to Simpson.

The board’s 42-page accusation, which seeks to revoke Dr. Leslie Eugene Wise’s medical license, is scheduled to be heard by an administrative law judge in June.

Wise, who began treating Simpson in 1993 and prescribed amphetamines for the producer as late as two weeks before his death, declined comment. His attorney, David Wheeler, called the allegations “nonsense,” adding, “We can’t wait for the hearing so we can prove them wrong.”

Simpson--whose partnership with Jerry Bruckheimer produced such hit films as “Flashdance” and “Beverly Hills Cop”--died Jan. 19, 1996, at age 52, of a drug overdose. Traces of 21 drugs were found in his blood.

Last month, the medical board filed a complaint against Westside psychiatrist Dr. Nomi Fredrick, seeking to strip her of her license because she allegedly overprescribed addictive drugs and enabled Simpson to persist in his substance abuse. Hearings in Fredrick’s case are expected to begin in late September.

The medical board accusation against Wise does not blame him for Simpson’s death but says his conduct amounted to gross negligence. It contends that he prescribed excessive amounts of dangerous medications to Simpson even though he knew that the producer was a drug addict using the medications for recreational purposes.

The complaint also contends that Wise accepted lavish presents from Simpson and solicited the filmmaker to shop at a gift store operated by the doctor’s wife.

Some of the pills that authorities confiscated from Simpson’s Bel-Air estate after his death were prescribed by Wise, sources said. Six months before he died, Simpson hired Dr. Stephen Ammerman and psychiatrist Fredrick to conduct what officials have called an illegal chemical detoxification program at the producer’s home to help him kick drug addiction. That program ended Aug. 15, 1995, when Ammerman was found dead of a drug overdose on Simpson’s estate.

Simpson’s death triggered a federal criminal investigation of 14 local doctors and eight pharmacies that culminated in a raid two years ago on the Westside homes and offices of Fredrick and her mentor, Dr. Robert Hugh Gerner. No action resulted from the criminal inquiry; the accusations against Wise and Fredrick are the only moves taken so far by the medical board.

Wise, an emergency room doctor and family practitioner, treated both Simpson and Ammerman for attention-deficit disorder with such stimulants as Dexedrine and Ritalin. The accusation contends that Wise had no training in the treatment of attention-deficit disorder and that he negligently wrote prescriptions based on an improper diagnosis of the patients provided by an educational psychologist instead of a trained psychiatrist.

The accusation alleges that Wise had also overprescribed medications to five other patients since 1993.

According to the accusation, Wise knew or should have known that Simpson was a drug addict because the producer allegedly admitted to the doctor that he used cocaine for recreational purposes. Wise continued to prescribe large and frequent doses of addictive drugs to Simpson even after the doctor ordered a series of drug screens for the filmmaker that revealed the presence of cocaine and various prescription medications, including sedatives, amphetamines and barbiturates, in his system, the complaint says.