CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES

By Harriet Ryan

June 9, 2009 12 AM PT

A judge issued a bench warrant Monday for Dr. Sandeep Kapoor after the physician, charged with illegally providing prescription drugs to Anna Nicole Smith, failed to appear at a hearing.

Superior Court Judge David Wesley stayed the warrant after the doctor’s attorney said Kapoor was tending to a patient with a medical emergency.

Kapoor’s co-defendants, Smith’s former confidant Howard K. Stern and her psychiatrist Khristine Eroshevich, were present for the brief proceeding in which Wesley set Aug. 12 as the tentative date for a preliminary hearing to determine whether prosecutors have enough evidence to proceed to trial.

-- Harriet Ryan

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Harriet Ryan

Harriet Ryan is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the paper in 2008, she has written about high-profile people, including Phil Spector, Michael Jackson and Tom Girardi, and institutions, including USC, the State Bar of California, the Catholic Church, the Kabbalah Centre and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. Ryan won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting with colleagues Matt Hamilton and Paul Pringle in 2019. She and Hamilton won the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability in 2023. She previously worked at Court TV and the Asbury Park Press. She is a graduate of Columbia University.

CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES

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