Maimed doctor: Opposed return of Mann permit

Can’t remember blast, he tells jury

— Nearly 1 1 /2 years after an exploding grenade hurled him into the cold morning air, knocking out several teeth, searing away skin, destroying his left eye and damaging his hearing and sense of smell, Dr. Trent Pierce told a federal jury that he doesn’t even remember the blast.

But Pierce, 55, a West Memphis physician and chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board, clearly remembered his acrimonious encounters with Dr. Randeep Mann, the Russellville physician accused of orchestrating the Feb. 4, 2009, bombing outside Pierce’s home.

In a voice tinged with anger, Pierce spent about two hours Wednesday on the witness stand in a Little Rock federal courtroom, describing how he considered his unpaid chairmanship of the board that regulates and licenses doctors an honor and “a means of paying a debt back to society.”

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Doctor bombing

“The purpose of the board,” he said, “is really to protect the public.”

With that in mind, he said, he wasn’t about to ever give Mann, now 52, a second chance at having his federal controlled-substances permit reinstated after the board yanked it in 2006 for a second time in response to complaints that Mann had overprescribed narcotics, leading to overdoses and deaths.

Despite Mann’s repeated requests to have the permit reinstated, which would allow him to rebuild his pain management practice, Pierce said, he considered the last revocation to be permanent.

“I believed, and still believe,” he told jurors, “that he overprescribed medications that led to overdoses and deaths of individuals.”

Turning to look directly at Mann, who sat across the courtroom, Pierce said, “I recall that I was not necessarily the kindest individual to Dr. Mann as board chairman.”

The blast shattered both of Pierce’s eardrums, destroyed his olfactory nerve, broke his right arm and right knee, blew tissue off his right forearm and out of his left thigh, and embedded shrapnel in his abdomen, forcing him to have part of his small intestine removed.

Pierce said that despite the physical injuries from which he still suffers as a result of the bombing, he was lucky not to suffer any cognitive impairments.

“I should be dead,” he said.

But, “I’m here because of God’s grace and goodness. Goodness and love, I think, were channeled through” emergency responders on the scene and trauma specialists in Memphis, where he was airlifted the day of the blast.

With his wife, Melissa, and various friends and fellow church members sitting in the courtroom gallery, Pierce strode to the witness stand in a jacket and tie, never limping or showing any outward sign of suffering other than scars on his face and what looked like a closed left eye behind tortoiseshell glasses.

He told jurors that for 27 years, he has operated the Family Practice Center of West Memphis as a sole practitioner. The clinic is about four blocks down Avalon Street from his home.

Pierce said that before the bombing, he was a “workaholic” with a routine of seeing patients daily from 8 a.m. until 6:30 or 7 p.m., minus about an hour for lunch. Then he would spend about 45 minutes at home doing his “dictations.”

In his spare time, Pierce said, he was active in his church and sang in the choir, and liked to fish in Heber Springs with his son, who is grown. He also serves on the board of directors of Fidelity National Bank, he said, being careful to note that he never disapproved a loan request.

Then-Gov. Mike Huckabee appointed Pierce to the 13-member Medical Board in January 1997, and he was elected chairman in late 2006.

The chairman, he said, directs board meetings that occur once every two months, decides which topics members will discuss at the meetings and summarizes the board’s concerns.

“The board chairman acts as the face and voice of the board,” Pierce said, describing his role as “being good parent/bad parent for physicians coming before the board.”

Pierce said he didn’t know Mann until Mann appeared before the board in October 2003 to face accusations of overprescribing medication, inadequate record-keeping, prescribing amphetamines for a boy with attention deficit disorder without seeking a second opinion, and distributing methadone to patients without operating an approved methadone clinic.

Pierce said the board gathered information about “a number of deaths” of Mann’s patients who had overdosed on prescribed medicines.

“I felt Dr. Mann had very poor insight into his prescribing pattern of controlled substances,” Pierce testified. Pierce said he was frustrated that the board’s hands were tied in disciplining Mann because partway through the hearing, a pain-management specialist changed his opinion about whether Mann had violated medical regulations.

Pierce said Mann was found to have violated only one regulation involving seeking a second opinion, and, much to Pierce’s dismay, Mann’s Drug Enforcement Administration permit was suspended for just one year.

Pierce remembered shaking his finger at Mann during the hearing, predicting that Mann would face the board again over overprescribing medications.

“He had no insight, he had no acceptance, that he had overprescribed medications that led to harm to these individuals,” Pierce told jurors Wednesday.

He said Mann appeared again before the board in July 2006 to face new allegations of overprescribing narcotics and unsuccessfully asked Pierce to recuse himself from the case, citing his previous remarks.

After a hearing that lasted 2 1 /2 days, Pierce said, Mann agreed to surrender his DEA permit permanently, as long as he was allowed to continue practicing medicine without prescribing certain drugs.

Pierce said that despite his belief that the surrender was permanent - which defense attorneys challenged - Mann continued to ask the board to reconsider after Pierce took over as chairman.

Pierce noted that in a letter Mann wrote to the board in 2007, he singled Pierce out as being unfair, although Pierce was only one of several board members who spoke out against Mann’s repeated requests for a new hearing.

On the morning of the bombing, Pierce testified, the last thing he remembers was joking with his wife about his attire as he prepared to walk out to his car. He said he doesn’t remember leaving the house, or seeing or moving a tire, but, “I have a vague recollection of falling backward and then sitting up in a kind of Indian-style manner.”

Experts have said someone propped a grenade-rigged spare tire against the bumper of Pierce’s 2008 Lexus sport utility vehicle and that it must have exploded as he picked it up to move it.

As a result of his injuries, which kept him hospitalized for 41 days, Pierce said he still has no sense of smell, has reduced vision in his remaining eye, is partially numb in one hand and will probably never regain hearing in his left ear.

Because of the injuries, Pierce said, “I’m a much more compassionate physician at this time.”

Earlier in the day, jurors heard from a federal inmate with an extensive criminal history who said Mann asked him in August 2009, while they were in the Pulaski County jail together, if he would “finish off Pierce” for $50,000.

The inmate, Steven Sean Briscoe of West Memphis, said Mann complained to him that one of his sons “didn’t do a good job in the bombing.”

No one but Mann has been charged in the bombing.

Briscoe acknowledged on cross-examination that he is very familiar with the federal system and possible ways to get a sentence reduced, including testifying against other inmates, as he has done three times before.

Defense attorneys for Mann and his wife, Sangeeta “Sue” Mann, who is accused of obstructing an investigation of her husband, will begin presenting their cases when the trial resumes at 10 a.m. Friday.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/29/2010

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