State College Doctor Waives Hearing on Drug Prescription Charges

This story has been updated with comment from Deputy Attorney General Patrick Leonard, who said felony charges against Cherry have been withdrawn, and Cherry’s attorney, Jerry Russo.

A State College doctor waived a preliminary hearing Wednesday morning on charges related to the prescription of medications to a woman who was not his patient but with whom he was having an affair.

Dr. Kenneth L. Cherry, 58, was charged in June by the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General with six felony counts of prescribing a controlled substance outside the scope of his practice and six misdemeanor counts of failure to keep records of the distribution of controlled substances.

Deputy Attorney General Patrick Leonard said on Wednesday afternoon, however, that the felony charges and three misdemeanor charges have been withdrawn by the Commonwealth. He said he anticipates that after arraignment, Cherry will enter a guilty plea for three remaining misdemeanor charges for failure to keep records for the prescription of Oxycodone, Percocet and Fentanyl. Leonard said he expects a probationary sentence and two and a half year suspension of Cherry’s medical license, which would come from the state Board of Medicine when it meets in September.

Cherry’s attorney, Jerry Russo, said ‘We’re working toward [a guilty plea].’ He added, however, that he has not yet received discovery materials, so it is premature to call it a certainty.

An investigation began in May 2016 when CVS Pharmacy in State College contacted the Bureau of Narcotics Investigations about large amounts of controlled substances being prescribed to the woman by Cherry, an orthopedic surgeon with University Orthopedic Center. Investigators said they found that between 2014 and 2016 Cherry wrote 63 prescriptions for the woman for Oxycodone, Percocet, Fentanyl, Adderall, Xanax and Ativan.

UOC staff reportedly told investigators that the woman had been a patient at UOC, but never a patient of Cherry’s, and that they had no documentation of her having office visits with him or prescriptions from him.

Cherry reportedly told investigators in June 2016 that he wrote her prescriptions without keeping records because she had no insurance. According to court records, he said he realized the previous summer that she was asking for too much medication but did not want to ‘abandon’ her.

A week later, the woman told investigators that she had a sexual relationship with Cherry and that he would write prescriptions for the medications she wanted, according to the criminal complaint. She reportedly said that other doctors at UOC did not want to prescribe pain medications for her and did not know that Cherry was doing so.

She said she never had a problem with insurance and that she used her insurance to pay for the prescriptions Cherry wrote for her, according to investigators. He allegedly would leave prescriptions for her to retrieve from his unlocked vehicle.

In October, Cherry reportedly admitted to his relationship with the woman and said he tried to get her in to see pain management doctors, but they would not write prescriptions for her. He said that he believed she had legitimate pain issues and that he was trying to taper her off medication, but investigators said evidence showed she was receiving more.