It will decide this trial this week?
PRESLEY'S DOCTOR ACQUITTED ON ALL PRESCRIPTION CHARGES
Special to the New York Times
Published: November 5, 1981MEMPHIS, Nov. 4— Dr. George Nichopoulos was acquitted today of 11 counts of criminally overprescribing addictive drugs to Elvis Presley, the country-western singer Jerry Lee Lewis and seven other patients.
The jury of six men and six women deliberated just over three hours before reaching the unanimous verdict for the acquittal on all counts.
Dr. Nichopoulos, 54 years old, hugged his wife, Edna, after the verdict was returned and shook hands with friends and other family members, including his two daughters, Elaine and Chrissie, who had crowded into the Memphis courtroom.
''I'm truly happy for Dr. Nichopoulos,'' the defense attorney, James F. Neal, said. ''I think he's been harassed for years. He is very thankful.''
Two of the jurors later congratulated Mr. Neal on his handling of the case. Directed Acquittal on 3 Counts
Judge Bernie Weinman of Criminal Court had directed acquittal of three counts against Dr. Nichopolous last week. The decision came after a witness for the prosecution had testified that there could have been a valid medical justification for the drugs the doctor was charged with prescribing for himself and a patient, Robert Deason.
In final arguments before the jury retired, Dr. Nichopoulos, who was indicted last January, was alternately portrayed as a kindhearted samaritan and as a physician with almost total disregard for accepted standards of medical practice.
Mr. Neal argued in his closing statement that Dr. Nichopoulos was a ''good samaritan'' who treated drug-dependent patients whom no other doctor wanted to accept.
''I can't think of anything that fits Dr. Nichopoulos better,'' Mr. Neal told the jury, referring to the biblical parable. ''Dr. George Nichopoulos is the man -the man who stopped and looked at these people and then offered to help. You are judging the samaritan.'' Prosecutors' View
However, the prosecutors, Jim Wilson and Jewett Miller, had another interpretation of Dr. Nichopoulos's actions. He was, they said, a physician who abused his authority in dispensing dangerous and addictive drugs.
In three weeks of testimony, the prosecutors showed that Dr. Nichopoulos prescribed more than 19,000 doses of narcotics, sedatives and stimulants to Mr. Presley in the 31 1/2 months before the entertainer died Aug. 16, 1977.
They also showed that he prescribed a variety of stimulants and sedatives to Mr. Lewis and the other patients. Dr. Nichopoulos acknowledged from the witness stand that he had prescribed the drugs, but he said many of those prescribed for Mr. Presley were thrown away or substituted with placebos, harmless, inert substances. Patients Already Had Problem
He also said all nine patients mentioned in the 11-count indictment had been getting drugs from other sources and already had a drug problem when they first came to him for treatment. Dr. Nichopolous said he gave them drugs in the hope of eliminating the other drug sources and then, once he became their sole supplier, weaning them from their drug dependency.
The prosecutors, who called 13 witnesses to the stand, were unable to establish clearly any other motive for the prescriptions. Dr. Nichopoulos received loans totaling $280,000 from Mr. Presley, but they were properly signed and executed and are being repaid, according to Beecher Smith, the attorney for the entertainer's estate.
Dr. Nichopoulos made little money from the other patients mentioned in the indictment, testimony showed. Mr. Lewis, for instance, paid an average of $9.10 for each examination he received from Dr. Nichopoulos. Internist's Testimony
Nonetheless, Dr. Alvin Cummins, a Memphis internist, testified that he could find no legitimate medical reason for any of the patients to receive the drugs. Such prescriptions, he said, were clearly contrary to accepted standards of medical practice.
However, Dr. Forest Tennant Jr., a drug researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles and one of 14 defense witnesses, said Dr. Nichopoulos might have made the wisest possible medical choice in prescribing the drugs while attempting to control the patients' intake.
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