United States v. Rudolph Netski

Netski appeals from his conviction for violating 26 U.S.C. § 4705 (g) (ordering narcotic drugs with unlawful intent. He makes three contentions: (1) The evidence was insufficient to sustain his conviction; (2) the district court erred in rejecting his requested jury instruction; and (3) section 4705(g) is unconstitutional.

Netski, a licensed pharmacist, owned a drug store. He ordered very large quantities of narcotic drugs, using official order forms. When an agent made a compliance inspection of Netski’s drug records, over 10,500 tablets of narcotic drugs could not be accounted for either by inventory or by prescription records. About a month after the audit, Netski surrendered 500 dilaudid tablets and 1000 morphine tablets to the agent, explaining that he had found them in the store. He placed orders for substantial quantities of dilaudid and dolophine tablets before he had made any sales of those drugs. There was evidence from which the jury could have found that Netski falsified two pages in his records to create fictitious prescriptions in order to account for the missing drugs.

Netski argues that the evidence was insufficient to prove that at the time he ordered the drugs…