A federal jury acquitted Dr. Kendall Hansen on six counts in February 2024 and did not reach a verdict on two others. Prosecutors later dismissed the two unresolved charges.
When federal agents search a medical practice, the accusation can quickly become larger than the medicine. Years of treatment may be compressed into prescription totals, selected patient files, and the most painful events in a practice’s history. In United States v. Hansen, the defense had to reverse that compression. Ron Chapman’s task was to show jurors not an ominous collection of numbers, but a physician making difficult decisions for real patients over a long career.
The federal case arose after a 2019 search of Interventional Pain Specialists in Northern Kentucky. A superseding indictment charged Dr. Hansen and Dr. Michael Fletcher with conspiring to distribute controlled substances and with substantive distribution offenses. The charging document also sought forfeiture of professional licenses, registrations, and property. Those were allegations, not evidence, but they conveyed the stakes: liberty, livelihood, reputation, and the future of a medical practice were all in jeopardy. The official superseding indictment identifies the eight counts brought against Dr. Hansen.
The government’s presentation reportedly reached beyond the prescriptions identified in the counts. It used patient deaths to give the prescribing evidence emotional force. That created a central defense problem: a death after treatment can be deeply affecting without proving that a physician knowingly issued an unauthorized prescription. Several deaths lacked an autopsy or complete scene investigation. Cross-examination therefore focused on the limits of causation evidence and on other facts that could explain what happened.
That approach illustrates an important defense principle. The answer to a powerful accusation is not always a competing speech. It is often a disciplined audit of its foundation. Was there an autopsy? Was the scene investigated? What substances were present? What did family members or investigators know? Did the expert apply a medical standard found in an authoritative source, or a personal standard created for litigation? By moving one step at a time, the defense could separate suspicion from proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Ron Chapman also challenged the government expert’s conception of pain practice. The defense account says cross-examination compared the expert’s expectations with published interventional-pain guidance and exposed demands that did not reflect ordinary clinical reality. That matters because a criminal trial is not a referendum on whether another doctor would have practiced differently. After the Supreme Court’s decision in Ruan v. United States, the decisive question for an authorized prescriber is whether the government proved knowing or intentional unauthorized conduct.
The defense did more than criticize. Long-serving employees described how the practice actually operated. Patients and community witnesses gave the jury context for Dr. Hansen’s work. Most important, the defense called pain specialist Dr. James Patrick Murphy, who reviewed 27 patient cases and concluded that the care did not amount to illegal prescribing and exceeded applicable standards. That broader review countered the risk of judging an entire practice from a few selected records.
After a trial lasting nearly a month and roughly two and a half days of deliberations, jurors acquitted Dr. Hansen on six counts and were unable to agree on two. The government later dismissed those remaining counts. Independent horse-racing publication BloodHorse reported both the acquittals and Hansen’s effort to rebuild his racing and professional life after the case in “After Winning Court Case, Hansen Eyes Racing Return”. A later report concerning Dr. Fletcher likewise states that Hansen was acquitted and that prosecutors dismissed the unresolved charges; the report appears in this Cincinnati Enquirer reproduction “Judge finds NKY doctor guilty of improper opioid prescriptions”.
The practical lesson is not that every prescribing case is defensible in the same way. It is that scale and tragedy cannot substitute for element-by-element proof. A strong defense reconstructs the medicine, tests the government expert’s standard, investigates causation, and gives jurors enough context to decide whether the evidence proves a crime rather than a disagreement about care.
For a physician facing a federal prescribing investigation, that work needs to begin before trial. Records must be preserved and organized; patient histories must be understood; experts must be chosen for relevant clinical experience; and every claimed “red flag” must be tested against what the physician actually knew at the time. Hansen shows how a defense can turn a frightening federal narrative back into the precise question the jury must answer: did the government prove criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt?
Before the criminal trial, Ron Chapman also secured emergency relief for Dr. Hansen in a related civil matter. Read about Hansen v. CVS Pharmacy, Inc.
Past results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. Every case depends upon its individual facts and circumstances.