Robert Courtney Case

Robert Courtney Case

Introduction and Biographical Information

Robert Ray Courtney is an ex-pharmacist who possessed and maneuvered Research Medical Tower Pharmacy in the city of Kansas. Robert, in the year 1990, started buying sspharmaceuticals from the hoary market and employing them at his pharmacy to fill prescriptions. With the passage of time, he started adulterating his prescriptions to achieve raised profits. Both these exercises were illicit and thus got arrested. Prior to his arrest, Robert worked at an Assembly of God Church as a deacon in the city of Kansas.

Case Background

Robert Courtney was declared guilty for eight counts of tampering of products that caused severe physical injury and twelve counts of misbranding or diluting drugs. He was sentenced by the district court to an imprisonment of thirty years that was an upward departure of three levels from the range of his imprisonment. Robert petitioned the degree of the upward departure. The sentence of Robert has been affirmed, after having reviewed the rationality of the degree of the upward departure and deducing that it was equitable. Robert registered a petition in the Supreme Court of the US for an injunction of certiorari. This petition of Robert was granted by the Supreme Court, the judgment was vacated and the case was remanded for further consideration (kansascity.fbi.gov).

Criminal and Contractual Aspects of the Case

Robert adulterated various drugs for chemotherapy prior to their distribution to the cancer patients for administration. His scheme for making profit was noticed when one amongst the doctors who purchased from Robert got skeptical that he was vending more drugs of chemotherapy as compared to the ones he was purchasing from the producers. The doctor impersonated a Taxol dose which Robert had lately delivered for one amongst their patients snd forwarded it for analysis to a lab. The report from the lab revealed that it contained thirty two percent of total amount of Taxol which was supposed to be contained in it. Later the doctor with the help of the FBI and FDA agents further verified seven samples of Taxol and Gemzar which Robert had delivered for the patients of that doctor. They revealed that those doses included almost seventeen to fifty percent of the chemotherapy drugs that were supposed to be contained. Then the federal agents made the doctor regulate doses of Paraplatin, Taxol, Gemzar, Zofran, and Platinol from Robert employing conjured names of patients. Test reports from the lab showed ...