[00:00:00] Speaker 01:
The first three cases have been submitted on the briefs.

[00:00:04] Speaker 01:
They are Pablo versus Garland, Mercado versus Garland, and Zillow versus Garland.

[00:00:12] Speaker 01:
And we will take up Singh versus Houston.

[00:00:17] Speaker 01:
Ms.

[00:00:19] Speaker 01:
Wayfald.

[00:00:25] Speaker 03:
Good morning.

[00:00:26] Speaker 03:
Verna Wayfald on behalf of Lisa Singh, the appellant

[00:00:31] Speaker 03:
This is a habeas case and obviously we have a lot of obstacles in our way.

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I wanted to begin by addressing the prosecutorial misconduct issue because I think that that also incorporates all of the evidence in the case.

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First, there isn't any doubt

[00:00:53] Speaker 03:
in terms of prosecutorial misconduct, that there is clearly established Supreme Court authority permitting this issue to go forward.

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There's also no doubt that there was prosecutorial misconduct.

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The Attorney General conceded that there was, and the Court of Appeal found that there was misconduct.

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However, the court found that the misconduct was harmless.

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And that is what I want to focus on.

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To begin, the Court of Appeal

[00:01:33] Speaker 03:
uh... overlooked an awful lot of the uh... the actual evidence in the case uh... and uh... before i addressed the uh... other act evidence which is the court of appeal found that while they were other act evidence that was properly admitted so the misconduct in mentioning two other

[00:01:56] Speaker 03:
Deaths was not harm was harmless, but there were other things before I address that that the court overlooked one the first Person that testified in terms of Michael who guard His father was called to the stand the prosecutor he asked him the first thing he said was I

[00:02:22] Speaker 03:
When did your son pass away?

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Now, that was in violation of a court order.

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The father broke down, became very emotional.

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And the judge ultimately admonished the prosecutor, and he said, get him off the stand and get him out of here.

[00:02:45] Speaker 02:
And told the jury not to consider that testimony, right?

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I'm sorry.

[00:02:49] Speaker 02:
And the judge told the jury not to consider that testimony?

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That's correct.

[00:02:53] Speaker 03:
However, to consider, no.

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The judge told the jury that his testimony was not relevant to the issue of Mr. Hogard's death.

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But it was definitely relevant to everything.

[00:03:13] Speaker 03:
Well, because he was also charged with unlawful prescribing.

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So it was clearly still relevant.

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And the trial counsel asked the court

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to strike the testimony, and the judge refused to do that.

[00:03:31] Speaker 02:
But didn't the judge tell the jury not to consider the death?

[00:03:34] Speaker 03:
Yes, the judge did do that.

[00:03:36] Speaker 03:
But in this particular case, the admonishment, I think, was clearly not enough.

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We go on to something else at the Court of Appeal.

[00:03:45] Speaker 01:
Mr. Huggard, though, was the subject of one of the counts for unlawful prescribing, right?

[00:03:51] Speaker 01:
That's correct.

[00:03:54] Speaker 01:
that she prescribed him certain medicines was relevant and admissible.

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It was just the death that wasn't.

[00:04:07] Speaker 01:
That's correct.

[00:04:07] Speaker 01:
And the trial court judge said, you're not to consider the death in any way disregarded.

[00:04:18] Speaker 03:
That's correct.

[00:04:21] Speaker 03:
My point is that that admonishment was clearly not enough to prevent the prejudice.

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Because we also have to remember that after Mr. Hougard left the stand and the judge dismissed the jury, one of the jurors and the judge said, you know, she really looks bad.

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And I've been watching her.

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One of the other jurors said, this is really a lot.

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Could we have a box of Kleenex for the jury room?

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Judge said, I'll see to it.

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Then the bailiff came back and said, Your Honor, I've talked to the juror, and it's just emotional.

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It's not physical.

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Then we go to the next act of misconduct.

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Now, I have to start out.

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After that happened, there were two prosecutors in this case.

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One of the prosecutors said to the judge, we're going to avoid, you know, we're not going to mention Mr. Amada's death because we don't want to avoid that Michael Hougard issue.

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then I think it was the next day they call.

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I'm sorry, I can't remember.

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It might have been a coroner investigator or somebody that was called to the stand about the John Mata case.

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And the first thing that the prosecutor said was, when did he pass away?

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So we have two serious acts of misconduct.

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Now, another thing that the Court of Appeal failed to consider in the harmless error analysis

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is the fact that there was a hung jury, or the jury came back and said, we are split on whether or not this is second degree murder or involuntary manslaughter.

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So that was another thing that the Court of Appeal overlooked.

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Now, let's go to the other act evidence that the Court of Appeal said was properly admitted.

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Now, I concede.

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The US Supreme Court has never held that other act evidence violates due process.

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However, the issue here is the Court of Appeals overlooking and misstating the record regarding the deaths of these other individuals.

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But if there's no clearly established, if there's no law from the Supreme Court about other act evidence, then how can you make a claim about other act evidence even if there was a mistake?

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Because that goes to the harmless error issue of the prosecutorial misconduct.

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Because when the Court of Appeals said that that evidence was properly admitted, we have to look at

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What was the evidence that allowed the prosecution to bring forward all these other deaths?

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And so that is what the jury heard, and that is contributed to the ultimate verdict of second degree murder.

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So for example, the first three uncharged counts before the first murder count were Matthew Stavron, Ryan Latham, and Nathan Kenney.

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Ryan Latham committed suicide.

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That was not a result of Dr. Tseng's prescribing practices.

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Nathan Kenney died of a lethal dose of methadone, which Dr. Tseng did not prescribe.

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Then we go into the Vu Nguyen and Stephen Ogle, who were the murder counts.

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And I'm going to address those.

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Then after Mr. Ogle passed away, we have three more, Michael Katznelson, Joshua Chambers, and Joseph Gomez.

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Now, they were also charged in the overprescribing counts.

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But Michael Katznelson died of a pre-existing heart condition.

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excuse me, Joshua Chambers died of a heroin overdose, and Joseph Gomez died also of a heroin overdose.

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So the jury, you have to think about it.

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The jury has heard about all of these deaths.

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But as to six of the uncharged deaths, five of them were not a result of Dr. Sung's overprescribing practices.

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And then we also get to the three counts of second degree murder.

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When you're saying that the cause of death was these other things, what are you relying on?

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Because from what I can see, the coroner's reports are not limited to the particular drugs that you're citing here.

[00:09:42] Speaker 03:
I am relying on, and it's articulated in quite detail in my brief, the toxicologist.

[00:09:52] Speaker 03:
Mr. Anderson, who testified as to the cause of death of all of these individuals.

[00:09:59] Speaker 03:
He is the one who said that, you know, just picking it out, that Joshua Chambers died of a heroin overdose.

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Joseph Gomez died of a heroin overdose.

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And they didn't even quantify the drugs in his system.

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Nathan Kenney died of a lethal amount of methadone that she did not prescribe.

[00:10:25] Speaker 03:
It was the toxicologist who was the prosecution's witness who testified as to the cause of, you know, the demise.

[00:10:37] Speaker 02:
For example, for Chambers, the coroner said that it was the combined effects of morphine, codeine, and hydrocodeine

[00:10:47] Speaker 02:
not heroin.

[00:10:49] Speaker 02:
So there may have been a dispute between the coroner and the toxicology expert you're relying on, but don't we have to take the facts in the light most favorable to the prosecution at this point?

[00:11:00] Speaker 03:
No.

[00:11:00] Speaker 03:
Well, I think if you look at the coroner, they are the ones that did the blood tests and determined how many drugs were in the person's system.

[00:11:15] Speaker 03:
But they didn't quantify them all.

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And it was the toxicologist who was the expert as to the cause of death regarding the drugs that were in this person's system.

[00:11:29] Speaker 03:
And it is the toxicologist who definitively stated that Joshua Chambers died of a heroin overdose.

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He says heroin is the real problem here.

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And same thing with Joseph Gomez, a heroin overdose.

[00:11:49] Speaker 03:
The toxicologist testified that of all the drugs that were taken by the coroner, or excuse me, detected by the coroner, they did not quantify how much of these drugs

[00:12:08] Speaker 02:
But that's your fact dispute.

[00:12:10] Speaker 02:
I mean, the coroner's report said the cause of death was combined intoxication of, I don't know how to pronounce all these things, but alprozolam, codeine, morphine, oxycodone, and oxymorphone.

[00:12:23] Speaker 02:
You dispute that because you're relying on a different expert, but I just don't understand how you can say that the record doesn't support the prosecution's view.

[00:12:33] Speaker 03:
Well, the issue is, again,

[00:12:37] Speaker 03:
How much of these, did the coroner quantify all of the drugs?

[00:12:42] Speaker 03:
I mean, the coroner detects which drugs are in the system.

[00:12:47] Speaker 03:
The coroner did not quantify the drugs, and the coroner cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that this was the cause of death.

[00:12:57] Speaker 03:
The prosecution is the one that called the toxicologist, who is the expert in determining

[00:13:04] Speaker 03:
the cause of death when we're dealing with drug overdose.

[00:13:10] Speaker 03:
And so it is the toxicologist that overrides.

[00:13:14] Speaker 02:
So that's an argument that could be made to the jury, or I guess you could try to exclude the coroner's report from the jury, but I don't think it was excluded.

[00:13:21] Speaker 02:
So I don't know how at this point we can say we have to disregard the coroner's report.

[00:13:26] Speaker 03:
Well, I'm not saying that you have to completely disregard it, but that

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in terms of the evidence that was presented, the toxicologist's opinion should prevail.

[00:13:41] Speaker 04:
But even if there were other... Is that consistent with the sufficiency of the evidence standard at this point?

[00:13:49] Speaker 03:
I'm sorry.

[00:13:49] Speaker 04:
How would that be consistent?

[00:13:51] Speaker 04:
How would just focusing only on the toxicologist's report and disregarding the coroner's report be consistent with the standard of review?

[00:14:00] Speaker 03:
Because the coroner, all the coroner does is detect the drugs that are in the system.

[00:14:10] Speaker 03:
The coroner is not an expert to say that one drug or more overrides the system.

[00:14:17] Speaker 03:
Although, in some of these cases, for example, because, let's take Joseph Gomez, because the heroin was so clear in morphine,

[00:14:28] Speaker 03:
was so clearly the cause of death, they did not quantify the other drugs.

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So I don't think that, particularly because this is the prosecution's expert, that you can ignore the fact that the toxicologists view as to what all of these drugs in the system detected by the coroner mean.

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Because the coroner is not an expert at that.

[00:14:56] Speaker 02:
And that's the difference.

[00:14:58] Speaker 02:
So was there a motion to exclude the coroner as not an expert?

[00:15:03] Speaker 02:
Well, let me go back.

[00:15:04] Speaker 03:
When the trial counsel learned that the prosecution was going to introduce all of these uncharged deaths, she asked for an offer of proof as to what was the cause of death regarding these individuals.

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And the prosecutor refused to make a formal cause of death.

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I mean, an offer of proof.

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He kept saying, it's all in the preliminary hearing.

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It's all in the preliminary hearing.

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And the trial counsel said, well, there is no expert testimony that

[00:15:45] Speaker 03:
regarding you know what caused these individuals to actually die and the judge just let it all in he goes assuming they make up you know they make up the

[00:16:00] Speaker 03:
You know that they can prove up their case, but it just all came in and though is the answer no there was no motion to exclude the coroner as well You know specifically you know not specifically to exclude that but certainly once once the trial counsel lost the 1101 be issue I Mean that there was no there was nothing else that could be done, but the but the trial counsel's extensive cross-examination

[00:16:30] Speaker 03:
of all of these witnesses showed that, you know, this is the cause of death.

[00:16:36] Speaker 03:
One cannot say that there were no drugs and other drugs.

[00:16:40] Speaker 01:
What do we make of the evidence that as to each of those deaths, the coroner called Ms.

[00:16:47] Speaker 01:
Zeng and she put an alert, and they were back patients she had in fact prescribed them all these drugs, she put an alert

[00:16:57] Speaker 01:
in each of their medical records file, and then subsequently she created medical records.

[00:17:07] Speaker 01:
Doesn't that show a consciousness of some culpability here?

[00:17:14] Speaker 03:
Not in terms of implied malice, perhaps involuntary manslaughter, but it's important to note that every single one of the coroner investigators

[00:17:26] Speaker 03:
or other law enforcement people that called her, you know, when they found the deceased, they detected, or they found, you know, pill bottles with her name on it, they called her up and they said, you know, this person is deceased, what are you treating them for?

[00:17:48] Speaker 03:
They did not, nobody said to her,

[00:17:52] Speaker 03:
we believe that you are the one that is responsible for this person's death.

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And so an alert in the medical record is not an indication that the doctor was put on notice that she was responsible for the deaths of these individuals.

[00:18:15] Speaker 03:
And in terms of the

[00:18:18] Speaker 03:
medical records, the evidence that she quote unquote fabricated the medical records is not there.

[00:18:25] Speaker 03:
It is true that when the medical record keeping transitioned from paper

[00:18:33] Speaker 03:
to electronic, there was a lot of chaos.

[00:18:38] Speaker 03:
That is very common in the medical profession.

[00:18:42] Speaker 03:
The receptionist who testified under a grant of immunity, she said that the doctor specifically said, everything needs to be written down.

[00:18:54] Speaker 03:
Don't leave anything out.

[00:18:56] Speaker 03:
And in terms of, it is true that some of the records were more complete later on, but there wasn't any evidence that she fabricated or altered these records.

[00:19:07] Speaker 03:
And I think that that's very important.

[00:19:11] Speaker 03:
How am I doing on time?

[00:19:12] Speaker 03:
I can't really.

[00:19:13] Speaker 01:
Okay, so you have a minute and 12 seconds left.

[00:19:16] Speaker 03:
Okay, then I'll save my time for rebuttal.

[00:19:18] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:19:18] Speaker 01:
That sounds good.

[00:19:19] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:19:32] Speaker 00:
good morning your honors and may it please the court deputy attorney general sumata costello appearing on behalf of respondent this is a case about a former doctor who prescribed high doses of opioids as well as other drugs to patients who did not need them and for whom she did not check their prescription history and whom she knew or had clear indication were either drug seekers or drug abusers and the evidence in this record amply supports the california court of appeals ruling

[00:19:58] Speaker 00:
the evidence taken as a whole supported the jury's finding that Petitioner was aware of the risk of death posed by her prescription practices.

[00:20:08] Speaker 00:
And I'd like to turn to the same order that Petitioner argued her claims in this morning.

[00:20:12] Speaker 00:
They're turning to the prosecutorial misconduct claim.

[00:20:16] Speaker 00:
Those were, it is true and the state did concede the prosecutor should not have elicited the deaths of those two patients

[00:20:24] Speaker 00:
because it fell outside of the window that the trial court had set as the parameters for what would be admissible.

[00:20:29] Speaker 00:
However, the Court of Appeal reasonably found that that did not violate her due process rights because the trial court instructed the jury three separate times that it was not to consider that evidence, to completely disregard that evidence.

[00:20:43] Speaker 00:
The instructions were quite clear and emphatic.

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And the jury is presumed to have followed those instructions, and there has been no rebuttal at all of that presumption.

[00:20:52] Speaker 00:
In addition to that,

[00:20:54] Speaker 00:
As the Court of Appeal noted, this is the two unlawful prescribing counts.

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This does not involve the murder counts.

[00:21:00] Speaker 00:
The claim is with respect to the unlawful prescribing counts only.

[00:21:04] Speaker 00:
And it is unlikely that the jury would have convicted her on these two unlawful prescribing counts because the jury knew about 11 total deaths as opposed to nine.

[00:21:14] Speaker 00:
There are already so many deaths in the record that it's unlikely that the addition of these two, while not to downplay them,

[00:21:22] Speaker 00:
There's just so many deaths that it's unlikely that two more would have changed its verdict.

[00:21:26] Speaker 00:
on unlawful prescribing for these two counts.

[00:21:29] Speaker 00:
And it is true that this case was an emotional case.

[00:21:33] Speaker 00:
That's something that defense counsel pointed in her opening argument.

[00:21:37] Speaker 00:
But also, in respect to the questioning, it wasn't an emotional response only with respect to eliciting the death of John Mata's son, but also when they were asking him questions about how did you learn your son became an addict.

[00:21:52] Speaker 00:
he became emotional then too.

[00:21:54] Speaker 00:
So it's not even limited to the elicitation of the death.

[00:21:57] Speaker 00:
But on the grand scheme of things, the California Court of Appeal reasonably decided that that was not fundamentally unfair.

[00:22:03] Speaker 00:
Turning then to the uncharged deaths, I want to point something out just to clarify the record, which is that Anderson's testimony does not directly contradict the coroner testimony for any of the patients.

[00:22:20] Speaker 00:
The coroner's

[00:22:21] Speaker 00:
Findings came in for all of the patients, and for each patient, the coroner attributed at least one of the drugs that petitioner prescribed to the death of that patient.

[00:22:31] Speaker 00:
And Anderson often either would add something to the mix or take something away from the mix, but there was always one drug that remained as a common ground.

[00:22:40] Speaker 01:
Was it Cantilson?

[00:22:43] Speaker 00:
Oh, yes, Your Honor.

[00:22:44] Speaker 00:
Except he did not die of an overdose, right?

[00:22:48] Speaker 00:
That is correct.

[00:22:49] Speaker 00:
This is with respect to the coroners who made findings attributing the death to one of the drugs petitioner prescribed Katznelson is separate that is on different evidentiary footing and that would only be based on the Circumstantial evidence surrounding his death which is the coroner did find with respect to Katznelson that he died from a drug Sorry from

[00:23:12] Speaker 00:
an enlarged heart and fluid in the lungs.

[00:23:14] Speaker 00:
However, the jury also heard evidence that the coroner did not test for fentanyl, that he was prescribed fentanyl the very day before he died.

[00:23:23] Speaker 00:
He was only 22 years old.

[00:23:26] Speaker 00:
And that those enlarged heart and fluid in the lungs is actually still consistent with an overdose death.

[00:23:33] Speaker 00:
So there's still evidence with respect to that patient from which the jury could infer that she contributed to his death.

[00:23:41] Speaker 02:
Are you contesting the idea that the Court of Appeal was wrong to call it an overdose death?

[00:23:48] Speaker 00:
No, Your Honor, because that, again, could be based on that same circumstantial evidence.

[00:23:53] Speaker 00:
So when the Court of Appeal characterizes all the uncharged deaths as overdose deaths, that, I mean, first, as was discussed earlier, this claim is inaccessible in terms of the admission of the evidence because there is no Supreme Court authority addressing the admissibility of other uncharged acts or propensity evidence.

[00:24:12] Speaker 00:
However, if we were going to discuss this outside of EDPA and look at the permissible inferences, one of the first things is, this is really an issue for the jury to have decided.

[00:24:23] Speaker 00:
The jury was instructed, at the time that this evidence is being admitted, there's no state court making some predicate finding that she caused these deaths.

[00:24:32] Speaker 00:
The jury was instructed, and it's CalJIC 2.50.01,

[00:24:37] Speaker 00:
that they had to decide if she committed this misconduct and that they were prohibited from considering this evidence unless the jury found that she'd committed these acts of misconduct, that being the uncharged deaths.

[00:24:50] Speaker 00:
And then if they found that connection, then they could consider that evidence.

[00:24:54] Speaker 00:
So this would only be considered by the jury if the jury decided that there was enough evidence that she was the one who contributed to their deaths, in which case then it's plainly irrelevant

[00:25:06] Speaker 00:
to whether or not she appreciated the risk of death that her prescriptions posed to these patients.

[00:25:13] Speaker 00:
And for the patients for whom, for example, taking Latham, petitioner argues that he died of a suicide, that was the manner of death, but not the cause of death.

[00:25:22] Speaker 00:
The coroner attributed the cause of death to at least one of the drugs that petitioner prescribed.

[00:25:27] Speaker 00:
With respect to Gomez and Chambers,

[00:25:30] Speaker 00:
petitioner insists that they died from a heroin overdose.

[00:25:34] Speaker 00:
But even there, when Anderson is asked, and this is the toxicologist, when he's asked, would you have changed the death certificates to reflect heroin as the cause of death, he says no.

[00:25:47] Speaker 00:
He's leaving in, he's not excluding the other drugs that the coroner identified as being the cause of death.

[00:25:54] Speaker 00:
And he simply would have worded it differently.

[00:25:56] Speaker 00:
He would have called it opiate intoxication.

[00:25:59] Speaker 00:
And with respect to Gomez, he just says primarily heroin, but he's not taking out of the equation the drugs that the coroners had attributed to the cause of death, one of which at least the petitioner prescribed.

[00:26:13] Speaker 00:
So even with those deaths, and with respect to one quote in particular, he does say at one point, I would have recommended it be identified as a heroin intoxication, but then he immediately says,

[00:26:23] Speaker 00:
Well, excuse me, let me rephrase that.

[00:26:26] Speaker 00:
In this particular case, it would be more the effects of opiates because heroin metabolite wasn't specifically identified.

[00:26:34] Speaker 00:
So even with those two patients, he's not saying that heroin was the only drug that contributed to their death.

[00:26:43] Speaker 00:
And that's true for, again, leaving aside Katz-Nelson, who we don't have coroner findings of tying him to a drug.

[00:26:50] Speaker 00:
That's the same for all of the patients where there's common ground on at least one of the drugs that petitioners prescribed.

[00:26:58] Speaker 00:
So again, going back to, this was really for the jury to decide in the first instance.

[00:27:04] Speaker 00:
And so there are permissible inferences that can be drawn from this evidence, which is that if she knows patient after another after another is dying within days of her prescribing them these high doses of opioids as well as other drugs, this clearly is signaling to her that her prescription practices are posing a risk of death to her patients.

[00:27:24] Speaker 00:
And in fact, they are dying left and right.

[00:27:27] Speaker 00:
in this two and three month period of time.

[00:27:31] Speaker 00:
So turning then to the sufficiency claim, it's that all of the evidence in the record amply supports the California Court of Appeals conclusion.

[00:27:40] Speaker 00:
We have the six uncharged deaths.

[00:27:43] Speaker 00:
There are the calls from the coroner's offices investigating the deaths as they're happening.

[00:27:48] Speaker 00:
There are calls from pharmacists questioning the legitimacy of her prescriptions.

[00:27:54] Speaker 00:
There are calls from family members who are confronting her and one grandmother says to her point blank, please stop giving him drugs or he's going to overdose and die.

[00:28:04] Speaker 00:
She does nothing in response to this except to tell her that it's better that her grandson get drugs from her than off the street.

[00:28:12] Speaker 00:
Another father called her a drug pusher and threatened to report her to police.

[00:28:16] Speaker 00:
And then she admits to a number of coroner investigators that she was aware that many of these patients were drug seekers or drug abusers.

[00:28:26] Speaker 00:
One patient tells her he's abusing Oxy and using heroin.

[00:28:30] Speaker 00:
Other patients tell her the same thing.

[00:28:32] Speaker 00:
And then other patients are not, she's not admitting that she knew.

[00:28:35] Speaker 01:
And now, the government, this is second degree murder, there was no requirement that the government prove motive?

[00:28:44] Speaker 00:
That's correct, Your Honor.

[00:28:45] Speaker 00:
There was no requirement that the government prove motive.

[00:28:48] Speaker 00:
So there's just more than enough evidence in this record to support the California Court of Appeals conclusion that she was aware, and all that's required is she was aware of the risk of death.

[00:29:00] Speaker 00:
And on this record, as a doctor with these extremely high doses, it's abundantly clear that the evidence shows she was aware of the risk of death that these prescriptions posed, especially in these high doses to these patients.

[00:29:15] Speaker 00:
And then I'd like to turn finally to petitioners point regarding the medical records and the evidence in the record is that they transition her husband testified that the office transition to electronic records from paper records in two thousand seven.

[00:29:30] Speaker 00:
However, the computers were seized in 2010, three years later, and again in 2012, and they imaged all the files in the computers.

[00:29:40] Speaker 00:
And for the office visits, for the same office visits in 2010, the 2010 imaging showed sparse records for a lot of the patients

[00:29:49] Speaker 00:
And then or for a lot of the visits and then in 2012 those are suddenly much more substantial or now they have information that the previous imaging didn't show and so that's a clear indication that after she's being investigated.

[00:30:03] Speaker 00:
somebody changed the records.

[00:30:05] Speaker 00:
The clear indication is that she changed those records.

[00:30:08] Speaker 00:
And in fact, in the opening brief, petitioner admits that for some of the, you know, she went in and added information.

[00:30:14] Speaker 00:
So this is years later and sometimes years after, sometimes after the patients have died.

[00:30:19] Speaker 00:
So that's a clear indication that she did.

[00:30:21] Speaker 02:
I understand petitioner to be arguing that nothing that was there before was changed.

[00:30:26] Speaker 02:
It was just added to, but I understand your position to be adding to a record is changing a record.

[00:30:31] Speaker 00:
Exactly correct.

[00:30:32] Speaker 00:
That is our position, Your Honor.

[00:30:33] Speaker 00:
And so the evidence in this case shows egregious behavior on the part of the petitioner and Ambly supports the California Court of Appeals ruling that there was sufficient evidence and that the other claims fail on the merits.

[00:30:46] Speaker 00:
Thank you.

[00:30:48] Speaker 00:
There are no further questions.

[00:30:50] Speaker 00:
Thank you, counsel.

[00:30:51] Speaker 01:
Thank you.

[00:30:52] Speaker 01:
I think you had a couple of minutes, Ms.

[00:30:55] Speaker 01:
Wayfeld.

[00:31:00] Speaker 03:
Well, I've already addressed at length the fact that the toxicologist is the only one that can determine really what is the cause of death based upon all of the coroners, the drugs that they detected.

[00:31:14] Speaker 03:
But in terms of what Dr. Singh was aware of, I mean, the issue is

[00:31:21] Speaker 03:
Did she have a conscious disregard for the risk of death?

[00:31:30] Speaker 03:
Or was this an objective error here to support involuntary manslaughter?

[00:31:38] Speaker 03:
And that's the issue.

[00:31:40] Speaker 03:
And I just want to sum up by saying, I mean, these opioid cases are really a tragedy.

[00:31:46] Speaker 03:
There's no question about that.

[00:31:48] Speaker 03:
It's a tragedy also for people who suffer chronic pain and can't get the drugs that they need now because after this particular case, no doctor wants to prescribe the drugs that they need.

[00:32:01] Speaker 03:
But it's also a tragedy to send somebody to prison for 30 years to life based on the evidence in this case.

[00:32:09] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:32:11] Speaker 01:
Thank you very much, counsel.

[00:32:13] Speaker 01:
Singh versus Houston will be submitted