At sentencing, mom blames doc for son's addiction

The first time Teri Kroll's son Timothy went to the doctor about his headaches, she went with him.

But Dr. Saji Francis soon convinced her that the 18-year-old was mature enough to come to his Massapequa office alone, Kroll said. When the two met privately, Francis began prescribing him high dosages of oxycodone, a prescription drug to which Timothy soon became addicted, she said.

Teri Kroll, in a statement that a prosecutor read Thursday at Francis' sentencing on charges he illegally sold prescriptions to his patients, laid out the trail leading to her late son's heroin addiction and pinned the blame squarely on Francis.

"He was not a doctor, but a drug dealer posing behind a certificate that said he had completed medical school," Teri Kroll wrote in the statement read by prosecutor Theresa Corrigan.

Judge Steven Jaeger sentenced Francis, 50, of Melville, to 6 months in jail, over the strong objections of both Kroll and prosecutor Corrigan, who had asked for a 2-year prison sentence.

Francis, who was known locally as "Dr. Frank," had faced a maximum sentence of 5 years in an upstate prison. He was promised the 6-month sentence when he pleaded guilty in July; as part of the plea deal he agreed to surrender his medical license, give up his practice and forfeit the house on Merrick Road that had served as his office.

Prosecutors said that after Francis, who is not a naturalized citizen, completes his jail sentence, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will hold a proceeding to determine whether he should be deported to his native India.

Corrigan suggested that Francis was getting a lighter sentence than he would have if he were a common drug dealer.

"He will benefit because of the very professionalism that he so abused," she said.

But Bob McDonald, one of two defense lawyers representing Francis, said the opposite was true - that Francis' case was receiving more scrutiny because he is a man of means.

"If he wasn't well-educated, if he wasn't a doctor, if he wasn't . . . privileged, I don't believe we'd be sitting here," he said, stressing that Francis was in no way charged with causing Timothy Kroll's death, and that Francis' relationship with Kroll ended five years before Kroll died in August 2009 at 23.

Jaeger spoke briefly, stressing his obligation to act objectively and saying that he had taken Francis' age, education, health, lack of a prior record and many other factors into account before rendering his decision.

Francis himself stood before he was sentenced and apologized.

"I do not make any excuses for my conduct," he said. "I apologize to anyone I hurt."

He added, "I lost everything."

But in the statement Corrigan read in court, Teri Kroll, who with her son was the one who alerted authorities to Francis' behavior, said her son rarely took so much as an aspirin before visiting Francis. Thereafter, she said, he became a full-blown addict and was in and out of treatment programs, even needing to lie in bed between his parents in order to calm down enough to sleep.

When he died last year, he was not using drugs, but his heart had been compromised by years of abuse and he suffered a heart attack, Teri Kroll said in the statement. As Corrigan read Kroll's account of the last moments she spent with her son in the hospital, the prosecutor's voice broke with emotion.

Jeffrey Reynolds, executive director of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism & Drug Dependence, said he was disappointed about Francis' sentence.

"We are working with addicted young people who have served longer sentences or are about to serve more time for low-level drug possession charges," Reynolds said. "We need to look at equalizing the criminal penalties for drug pushers, whether they work in the street or in a medical office."