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Noel Blackman takes plea deal in US
Former Minister of Health under the Desmond Hoyte led-People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR)
Changing his plea:
Dr. Noel Blackman
administration, Dr. Noel Blackman, has signaled his intentions to change his plea in a US court later this month on charges relating to the dealing of drugs.
In court documents filed earlier this week in a New York court, Blackman, who was arrested in February as he was about to board a JFK airport flight to Guyana, said that he has managed to reach a plea agreement with the US prosecutors, with a change of plea expected as early as August 24.
The announcement came as Blackman was set to face another court date yesterday.
The doctor was arrested while on his way to Guyana after being named as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).
Reports are that Federal authorities took the 68-year-old doctor into custody after they ordered a Guyana-bound jet, taxiing for takeoff, to return to an airport terminal.
Prior to his arrest, investigators had the doctor and his Brooklyn office under surveillance for weeks.
The David Granger administration subsequently named Dr. Carl ‘Max’ Hanoman as the new GPHC Chairman.
Blackman has been in custody since his arrest with prosecutors fearing that he will flee if allowed on bail.
Prosecutors said that Blackman had illegally prescribed vast amounts of a painkiller drug in what has been described as a “drug-dealing enterprise spanning three States.”
According to court documents, Judge Joanna Seybert, in allowing the application for the doctor to change his plea, also agreed for him to cancel a status hearing on the case, which was scheduled for yesterday.
Blackman is co-owner of the Hoyte Blackman Television (HBTV- Channel Nine) station locally.
The doctor and his assistant, Eva Torres, 31, of the Bronx, were indicted on two counts: conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and distribution of a controlled substance.
Prosecutors had signaled intentions to seize Blackman’s assets that would have come from the illegal activities.
There were reports that he prescribed oxycodone to some patients he hadn’t seen, which was especially troubling, since the addictive drug could cause life-threatening breathing problems during the first 72 hours of treatment and anytime the dose is increased.
He was also accused of failing to declare more than US$30,000 which he carrying at the time of his arrest on his way to Guyana in February.
Records show Dr. Blackman wrote 114 prescriptions in 2014 for about 3,800 oxycodone pills and nearly 2,500 prescriptions for about 365,000 pills last year.
According to Newsday, US Magistrate Anne Shields ordered Dr. Blackman held as a flight risk, pending future hearings. Until his arrest, Dr. Blackman had practiced surgery and pain management from offices in Franklin Square, Elmhurst and Brooklyn, and most recently lived in Far Rockaway, but was a longtime resident of Valley Stream, New York.
Blackman’s arrest, at the time, was the latest in a string of cases involving Long Island doctors charged with illegally doling out highly addictive prescription painkillers.
In Blackman’s case, Torres was stopped and searched at Kennedy Airport in December, returning from visiting him in Guyana, with more than 40 oxycodone prescriptions signed by Dr. Blackman for patients, according to court papers.
Agents checking the names of those for whom Dr. Blackman wrote prescriptions found that some lived in the Bronx and New Jersey, and as far away as Florida.
When his assistant was arrested at her Bronx home, she told agents an unnamed person, identified only as John Doe One, would give her a list of names, and Dr. Blackman would write oxycodone prescriptions without examining the recipients, the court papers said.
Torres said Dr. Blackman was paid $300 for each of those prescriptions, the papers said.
After he was arrested at the airport, Dr. Blackman told agents that “it was possible that some of his patients were addicted to oxycodone, and that he charged approximately $300 to see patients at his ‘pain management’ practice, and that he typically saw approximately 100 patients per day, which he estimated was about one patient every six minutes,” according to the papers.
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