Georgia doctor tries to withdraw drug-case guilty plea. Judge denies him a ‘do-over’
A Middle Georgia doctor who on the eve of trial in federal court here last June pleaded guilty to illegally dispensing drugs to patients and then, months later, tried to withdraw his plea, was this week denied in his effort to, in essence, “un-plead” guilty.
In a wit-filled court order penned by U.S. District Judge Clay D. Land, the doctor’s attempt to take back his plea was likened to a golfer seeking a free stoke — a swing on the house — after an errant hack has sent his ball rocketing awry.
The judge wrote that Dr. Thomas H. Sachy’s request amounted to a weekend duffer asking for “a mulligan,” but noted that, indeed, “unlike the ‘Rules of Golf,’ the law does sometimes provide for a ‘do-over.’”
But, the judge added, “not under the circumstances presented here.”
Sachy, 58, a physician from Jones County, was jailed early in the summer of 2018. He was accused of money laundering and drug dispensation and distribution charges, and also of unlawfully dispensing drugs that led to death or serious injury. One person Sachy was said to have prescribed oxycodone and fentanyl to died in 2017, federal authorities alleged at the time.
Had he gone to trial and been convicted of all charges, Sachy faced a possible sentence of 25 years to life behind bars.
Last June, Sachy entered a guilty plea and was awaiting sentencing of up to eight years in prison, when, in February, he filed a motion to withdraw his plea.
He claimed that some of his past attorneys, who included renowned Atlanta defense lawyer Bruce Harvey, had been “ineffective” and that Sachy’s many answers to a judge’s routine questions during his plea hearing had been false.
According to a court filing, Sachy claimed he had been led by a previous lawyer to believe that he was going to receive a “time-served” sentence and go home the day of his plea. Sachy based this claim, according to his motion to withdraw the plea, on grounds that he was “misinformed of the consequences of his guilty plea.”
Guilty pleas may, in fact, be withdrawn before sentencing. However, a defendant must present a “fair and just” basis for doing so, the judge noted. The bar meriting such withdrawals in the federal system is high, and Land wrote that Sachy “has failed to show that” such reason exists.
“Routinely awarding mulligans would make a mockery of the law,” Land wrote. “For Defendant to obtain a ‘do-over’ under the law, he must be entitled to it based upon well-established legal principles.”
The judge said Sachy was “an astute professional” and had been “adequately informed” by his attorney, who had negotiated for Sachy an eight-year-maximum prison term. The doctor could have faced more than three times that had he been convicted at trial.
“While Defendant may have developed second thoughts several months (after his plea), he has failed to establish that on the day he pled guilty (that) he did so involuntarily or without a full understanding of the consequences,” Land wrote. “This plea by a relatively sophisticated defendant was clearly voluntary.”
The judge’s stern but somewhat tongue-in-cheek ruling, in footnotes, cited the United States Golf Association rulebook.
The order also said that Sachy, mistakenly, “apparently thought” he would leave court a free man upon entering his plea last June.
“The plea agreement clearly gives no such indication,” Land noted, adding that Sachy’s sentence would not have been determined by the judge in his case until after a presentence report was completed weeks after the plea.
Land went on to note that Sachy, “perhaps filled with hope, voluntarily pled guilty knowing only that a possibility existed that he may get a sentence well below the guidelines range. Although he has not been sentenced yet, his hopes of being released on the day he pled guilty were soon dashed.”
The judge concluded that “dashed hope” did not provide enough reason to grant the plea’s withdrawal.
“If it did,” Land wrote, “guilty plea mulligans would be as prevalent in federal district courts as they are on Saturday morning on golf courses throughout the country where recreational players often ignore the rules.”
Sachy is expected to be sentenced in the coming weeks.
Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report.
This story was originally published May 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM.