CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES

A Valley Village pharmacist testified Thursday that he refused to fill a drug order for Anna Nicole Smith the year before her fatal overdose because the quantities of medication requested by her psychiatrist amounted to “pharmaceutical suicide.”

“If she got ahold of these medications, it could have fatal consequences,” pharmacist Ira Freeman told a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge hearing evidence against the psychiatrist, another doctor and Smith’s boyfriend.

Freeman recounted being stunned by the handwritten list of half a dozen painkillers, sedatives and a muscle relaxant faxed to his store Sept. 15, 2006 -- just five days after Smith’s son had died in the Bahamas. Psychiatrist Khristine Eroshevich, a friend and neighbor of the model who had flown to the Bahamas to treat her, signed the list and Smith’s Studio City internist, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, forwarded it to the pharmacy, Freeman said.

Freeman is among several pharmacists who have testified at a preliminary hearing for Eroshevich, Kapoor and Smith’s boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, who are accused of illegally providing prescription drugs to Smith. All have pleaded not guilty.

-- Harriet Ryan