Former Baldwin doctor William Conway gets 8 years for illegally distributing oxycodone

A former Baldwin doctor was sentenced to 8 years in prison Thursday by a federal judge who said the doctor's illegal distribution of the painkiller oxy-codone was responsible for the death of one of his patients.

William Conway, 71, will appeal the sentence, his attorney, Richard Langone, said after the court appearance in U.S. District Court in Central Islip.

Conway's supporters told the judge in court Thursday and in letters submitted earlier that he was a good man who tended to needy patients and had been duped by drug abusers.

The supporters sat together on one side of the courtroom, with one telling the judge that Conway had weaned him off painkillers that other doctors had prescribed for injuries suffered at the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center.

The families of two men who died of overdoses after relatives said they received prescriptions from Conway sat on the other side of the court and said in letters read into the record by Eastern District prosecutor Michael Canty that the doctor had taken away their sons.

"He didn't do it for profit," Judge Leonard Wexler said of Conway's overprescribing. "He also did a lot of bad. That's the other side."

Conway had pleaded guilty in July 2013 to the distribution charge and theoretically faced a sentence of between 7 to 9 years under federal sentencing guidelines, according to Langone. But federal prosecutor Canty disagreed at the time, saying that the doctor faced 20 years in prison, without even taking into account the death of any patients.

In his plea, Conway did not admit to being responsible for the deaths of any of his patients as a result of prescribing the drug to them.

But in August, Wexler ruled that Conway was responsible for the death of patient Giovanni Manzella, 34, of Long Beach.

Even if a defendant hasn't admitted to such actions, a federal judge is allowed to take into account such conduct in determining sentencing.

Federal probation officers and prosecutors both asked the judge to do so, recommending that Conway be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for the 2011 deaths of both Manzella and another patient, Christopher Basmas, 29, of Hicksville.

After the sentencing, Manzella's mother, Lucy, stood outside court with her husband, also named Giovanni, and said they respected the judge's decision. "We think eight years for this particular doctor is a life sentence," she said.

Basmas' sister, Cynthia Russo of Mount Sinai, said outside court that, "No time [in prison] is enough. He knows what he did and he was callous and he did it anyway. He's arrogant and nothing is going to change that."

In his August ruling, Wexler said Conway "prescribed oxycodone to Manzella for no legitimate medical purpose" and that Manzella died as a result of using the oxycodone Dr. Conway prescribed. In order for Conway to face the stiffer sentence, the judge did not have to rule on the cause of Basmas' death.

Langone, of Garden City, had argued that both Manzella and Basmas were "long-term opioid abusers and doctor shoppers," adding that Manzella had 43 other doctors and Basmas 28. The two, as well as other patients, had the ability to manipulate the well-intentioned Conway into prescribing the painkillers, Langone argued.

Federal prosecutors said that Conway had written 5,554 prescriptions for 782,032 oxy-codone pills between January 2009 and November 2011 -- some for people he had never treated or even met.

Conway was among seven physicians who have been arrested by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents on charges of illegally prescribing oxycodone to Long Islanders after the 2011 murder of four people during the robbery of a Medford pharmacy by David Laffer, escalating an ongoing investigation into the illegal distribution of painkillers.