Supreme Court Rules--AAPS Helps Overturn Forced Drugging Order

 MEDIA CONTACT:   Kathryn Serkes
                                202.333.3855
                              kaserkes@att.net
  June 16, 2003
 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 DOCTORS WIN SUPREME COURT DECISION TO HALT FORCED DRUGGING

 Washington, D.C. -- The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons
 ("AAPS") has helped stop the forced drugging of a citizen by the federal
 government. In a 6-3 decision rendered today, the Supreme Court sided with
 AAPS and reversed the order to drug a St. Louis dentist accused of
 Medicaid fraud.

 Dr. Charles Thomas Sell, never convicted of a crime, has been held in a
 brutal prison for more than five years without a trial.  Earlier a federal
 district court had ordered the injection of Dr. Sell with mind-altering
 drugs against his will, and a divided Court of Appeals for the Eighth
 Circuit had affirmed.

 "Never did we think our own country would imprison a peaceful defendant
 for  more than five years without a trial," commented AAPS General Counsel
 Andrew Schlafly.  "We are gratified that the Supreme Court sees no justification
 in the record for forcibly drugging him.  We used to complain when the
 Communists engaged in such tactics.  This should not occur in America."

 The Court adopted three arguments advanced in AAPS's amicus curiae brief
 before the High Court.  First, Dr. Sell's long imprisonment without trial
 reduces any interest by the government to drug him.  Second, the Court
 ruled that the "specific kinds of drugs at issue may matter here as elsewhere."
 AAPS complained about how the district court had ordered drugging without
 limitation on quantity and type.  Third, courts must consider less
 intrusive alternatives to forced drugging, as another appellate court had done.

 Dr. Sell, a dentist, was originally arrested based on charges of violating
 Medicaid regulations in caring for the poor.  Had he been tried and
 convicted, he would have already served the full term of a sentence.

 Even though upholding the drugging, both the district and appellate courts
 admitted that Dr. Sell posed no danger to himself or any others.  Yet he
 has been imprisoned, often in solitary confinement, under the threat of
 unlimited drugging.  His treatment in jail has included videotaped
 scalding by officials, yet the government refuses to release a complete copy of the
 tape.  Dr. Sell was featured in an expose on NBC's "Dateline" program on
 June 13th.

 NOTE: Background information and the AAPS brief are posted at
 www.aapsonline.org
 --------------------
 AAPS is a non-partisan professional association of physicians in all
 specialties, dedicated since 1943 to the sanctity of the patient-physician
 relationship.

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