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The death of Anna Nicole Smith still has echoes through popular culture almost two decades after her fatal accidental overdose.
Following that tragedy, a case for over-prescribing medication was brought against three doctors in Los Angeles, which legendary defense attorney Ellyn Garofalo describes as descending into a circus amid “terrible political pressure.”
The whole thing has been turned into a movie, “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor,” with Kal Penn playing Garofalo’s former client in the case, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, while “Terminator” star Linda Hamilton plays Garofalo and Abbie Cornish plays Smith.
Garofalo successfully defended Kapoor, on charges of conspiring with Smith’s alleged boyfriend and lawyer, Howard K. Stern and Dr. Khristine Eroshevich to prescribe thousands of addictive prescription pills and opiates to tragic Playboy playmate Smith, who died aged 39 in February 2007.
And Garofalo gave a fascinating insight into what was one of the first big celebrity trials of the modern era, telling Page Six how former California Attorney General Jerry Brown had originally wanted to bring murder charges.
“There was political pressure in LA to bring this as a murder case,” she revealed.”But hey couldn’t do it because Anna Nicole died in Florida. So they ended up bringing this over prescribing case.
“They had to indict my client only so they could bring everyone else in as a conspirator, but he had not seen Anna Nicole for six months before she died and was not writing prescriptions for her before she died,” she added.
The trial was “beyond a circus”, claimed the attorney. “The first time Sandeep came to see me, he was followed by helicopters circling him and at one time had to get into the trunk of his mother’s car.
“It was extraordinary, like something out of the movies. He was being followed by hordes of reporters.
I’d never seen anything like it.”
Garofalo alleged the DA put Smith’s Haitian nannies on the stand and got them to testify prescriptions under Howard’s name were really for Anna Nicole.
“The DA had arranged for them and their families to take a VIP trip to Disneyland,” she said, “and they got them new housing (in the Bahamas). That’s how bad it was.”
During the 2010 Los Angeles drug conspiracy trial, the prosecution attempted to use testimony from two Haitian nannies, Nadine Alexie and her sister-in-law, Quethlie Alexie, who had worked for Smith while she was living in the Bahamas with her newborn daughter Dannielynn Birkhead.
Dannielynn, now 20, was only five months old when her mother died. Her father, Larry Birkhead, has blasted the film, which is based on Kapoor’s 2017 book.
“I actually have had conversations with this doctor and his representatives,” Birkhead told ET in July, “I warned them about the harm and the emotional distress that this puts on not just myself but also, most importantly, Dannielynn, and how this could impact her and the things that she sees.”
However, Garofalo reminisced of the prosecution, “They showed bottles of pills which she (Quethlie) testified were prescriptions under Howard’s name that were really for Anna, but when asked if she could read the label, she said ‘I don’t speak English’, they asked her, ‘do you read in any language?’ and she said no. They asked her, well how do you know that that’s Howard’s name, and she replied, ‘the prosecutor told me!”
The jury found Stern and Eroshevich guilty of conspiracy counts related to fraudulently obtaining prescriptions, while Dr. Kapoor was acquitted of all charges. None of the defendants were charged directly with causing her death.
In January 2011, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry threw out the felony conspiracy convictions of Stern and Eroshevich.
“It did take a while for Sandeep to recover,” admitted Garofalo, whose high profile clients include Alyssa Milano and Minnie Driver.
“He went from a small practice in Studio City to being the center of all this attention, It was a life-changing experience.”
She says she has yet to meet Linda Hamilton, but said, “Watching the movie was quite triggering, it brought it all back — but I would like to meet her.”