A Hempfield doctor was sentenced to serve five years on probation after he pleaded guilty in September to consolidated charges of illegally writing prescriptions for pain medicine for his own personal use.
The Tribune-Review reports that the sentence for Dr. Ralph Capone came down yesterday in the court of Judge Meghan Billik-Defazio. He was charged with writing over 300 illegal prescriptions for hydrocodone and other pain killers over a three-year span, with those prescriptions filled at pharmacies in Greensburg, Hempfield and Jeanette.
Judge Billik-Defazio said yesterday that she gave him a sentence that avoided jail time because of his personal efforts to treat his addiction and get himself off of drugs.
