Dr. Hsiu-Ying Tseng, a doctor from Los Angeles, Calif., has been sentenced to 30 years in prison after being charged of three accounts of murder for prescribing excessive amounts of painkillers, which led to the death of three of her patients.
Dr. Tseng, who specializes in internal medicine, prescribed "crazy, outrageous amounts of medication to patients who didn't need the pills," Deputy District Attorney John Niedermann said, according to USA Today. Niedermann went on to point out to the jurors that Dr. Tseng did not even stop her tracks even when some of her patients have already died.
"Something is wrong with what you're doing if your patients are dying," he added.
On top of her murder conviction, she was also charged with 19 counts of unlawfully prescribing a controlled substance and one count of obtaining a controlled substance by fraud, Reuters reported.
"(She's) a person who seemingly did not care about the lives of her patients in this case but rather appeared more concerned about distributing dangerous controlled substances in an assembly line fashion so as to collect payments which amounted to her amassing several million dollars," said George Lomeli, the Superior Court Judge that imposed Dr. Tseng's sentence, according to Fox News.
During trial, Dr. Tseng tried to bargain the judge for a 15-year prison term and stated an apology for her victims. However, the judge was not swayed, and now the mother of two will have to wait 30 years before she even gets a chance to appeal for parole.
