A few weeks after he was sentenced to federal prison for exchanging opioid prescriptions for sexual favors, the former Cobb Medical Examiner has been sentenced on drug-related charges in Cobb County.
Joe Burton, 73, was sentenced to eight years in prison on Wednesday by Cobb Chief Magistrate Court Judge Joyette Holmes. In July, he pleaded guilty to several counts of racketeering, fraud in obtaining controlled substances, and violations of Georgia’s controlled substances act.
“No one is above the law,” Cobb assistant district attorney Jason Saliba said in a statement. “We prosecute anyone who distributes narcotics in Cobb County.”
Burton was given an eight-year federal prison sentence on Aug. 29. According to the Cobb District Attorney’s Office, Burton will serve his sentences concurrently.
The Cobb medical examiner from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, Burton pleaded guilty in federal court in May to being part of a conspiracy to illegally distribute opioid painkillers in exchange for sexual favors.
He was one of several people indicted in February by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Atlanta. According to his federal indictment, Burton issued more than 1,100 opioid prescriptions over a two-year period beginning in July 2015, amounting to more than 108,000 individual doses, including over 66,000 oxycodone pills.
Federal prosecutors said Burton prescribed opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone without conducting a medical examination of patients or even meeting with them at all.
The street value of the oxycodone pills alone, prosecutors estimated, was more than $2 million.
Three female co-defendants in the federal case had sex with Burton in exchange for receiving the drugs for themselves and for others, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
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