Appeals court upholds William Bauer's conviction

SANDUSKY — A federal appeals court has voted unanimously to uphold the conviction of Dr. William Bauer, a local physician who was accused of overprescribing pain pills to his patients. The ruling largely hinged on a U.S. Supreme Court decision, issued after Bauer's conviction in a federal court trial in Toledo, which said jury instructions must make it clear the doctor understood his actions were wrong. The Sixth Circuit federal appeals court, based in Cincinnati, found the jury instructions in Bauer's case fell short of the U.S. Supreme Court's new standard but not enough to overturn the conviction. Bauer, 86, currently is serving a five-year prison term in a minimum security prison in Morgantown, West Virginia. In July 2021, he was convicted of multiple charges regarding allegations that he overprescribed pain medications and committed fraud on federal health care programs by not following good medical practices. A federal jury in Toledo convicted Bauer of 76 counts of distribution of controlled substances and 25 counts of health care fraud. Before his arrest, Bauer lived in Port Clinton and maintained a practice in Sandusky. Bauer was sentenced in March 2022 and reported to prison in June 2022. A federal prison directory lists his release date as March 29, 2026. Bauer has contended that he took care of chronic pain patients who had been abandoned by their doctors, and his patients have defended him in interviews with the Register. Bauer gave frequent interviews and never hid his opinion that pain patients in the U.S. are being neglected. The not-yet-published opinion, written by Circuit Judge Jane Stranch and backed by judges Raymond Kethledge and Helene White, looked closely at last year's Ruan v. United States ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. That 9-0 ruling in the Ruan v. United States case overturned convictions in cases similar to Bauer's. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote that prosecutors must show the defendant "knowingly or intentionally" acted in an unauthorized manner. Stranch found that, in the light of Ruan, future instructions in similar cases. But she also found that the instructions were reasonable and protected Bauer's rights. "We cannot say that plain error occurred," Stranch wrote. During oral arguments earlier this year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura McMullen Ford conceded the instructions were flawed in the light of Ruan but said the jurors had been told they could not convict Bauer if he acted in good faith. No reasonable jury would have reached a different verdict, she contended. Bauer ignored warning signs, such as the refusal of some local pharmacies to fill his prescriptions and reports by police that some of the pain pills apparently were being diverted to nonmedical uses, she said. Stranch also took up Bauer's complaint that the presiding judge, U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary, unfairly prevented all but one of Bauer's proposed 12 expert witnesses from testifying. Bauer's attorneys failed to challenge Zouhary's ruling and failed to show how the court had abused its discretion, Stranch wrote. White's separate concurring agreement found that while she agreed the jury instructions were "adequate," Bauer might well have been found innocent if the jury instructions had been better. "Although there was certainly evidence that Dr. Bauer ignored many red flags and veered from the objective standard of care, there was also evidence that all 14 patients were referred by other doctors for pain management, Bauer's practice did not resemble a typical 'pill mill,' Bauer had a long history of being a prominent physician on the vanguard of pain management, and there was no financial incentive to overprescribe opioids," White wrote. "Under these circumstances, a jury properly instructed to focus on Bauer's subjective knowledge and intent to prescribe controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose and outside the course of professional practice might well have found him not guilty," she wrote. Bauer's attorneys are studying the opinion to determine if an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court can be considered.