A former medical examiner pleaded guilty in federal court to giving prescriptions for opioid drugs to women with whom he was romantically involved and who then sold them, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta announced Wednesday.

“This defendant traded prescriptions for sex and is responsible for distributing thousands of doses of dangerous opioids within our community,” U.S. Attorney Byung J. “BJay” Pak said in a news release. “We are grateful for the dedicated work of our local and federal law enforcement partners who are equally committed to the arrest and prosecution of those who seek to profit from unlawfully distributing these drugs.”

Dr. Joseph L. Burton, a former county medical examiner and forensic pathologist, pleaded guilty to conspiring to illegally distribute opioid painkillers in exchange for sexual favors, Pak said. Burton was indicted along with others in February 2018. Pak said five of those individuals also have pleaded guilty to similar charges.

This case was presented as part of Operation SCOPE, (Strategically Combating Opioids through Prosecution and Enforcement), an initiative that targets individuals illegally prescribing opioids, as well as drug traffickers, Pak said.

Burton's attorney, former federal prosecutor Buddy Parker, said Wednesday by email: “Dr. Burton is and has been for some time an impaired physician.  Currently, he is being examined by Dr. Matthew Norman, a forensic psychiatrist, who is to prepare a report and provide testimony in mitigation of Dr. Burton's sentence.”

Parker said that, “while the government claimed that some of the prescriptions were to women in exchange for sexual acts (conduct Burton admitted), it did acknowledge that many, indeed a large majority of the prescriptions, were issued by Burton, admittedly without proper medical examinations having been conducted, to people who did not engage in sexual acts.”

“Burton, as acknowledge by the Government, did this conduct without charging any money.  So, the question presented is why?  We hope to answer that question based on Dr. Norman's analysis,” Parker said.

Burton is a forensic pathologist who has worked on investigations for some of Georgia's most infamous crimes. At the time of his arrest, Burton, 73, was in private practice as a consulting pathologist.

Federal agents began investigating Burton in early 2017 after state authorities discovered he allegedly was prescribing painkillers to a large number of patients, even though he was not operating a medical clinic or regularly seeing patients, federal prosecutors said. Over a two-year period beginning in July 2015, Burton allegedly issued more than 1,100 opioid prescriptions—equivalent to more than 108,000 individual doses—including more than 66,000 oxycodone 30 mg pills, prosecutors said.

“This guilty plea is a shining example of the great working relationship that DEA has with its law enforcement partners and the U.S. Attorney's Office,” Robert Murphy, special agent in charge of the Atlanta Field Division of the DEA, said in Pak's news release. “In the wake of this country's prescription opioid epidemic, DEA's top priority is to investigate individuals like Dr. Burton who egregiously violate the law by illegally prescribing prescription opioids … in exchange for sexual favors. He prescribed these pills even though he was not regularly seeing patients or operating a medical facility. The community is now safer because of his prosecution.”

Prosecutors said Burton prescribed opioids such as oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone, irrespective of any legitimate medical purpose and outside the normal course of professional practice, in exchange for sexual favors and romantic affection. The women would fill their prescriptions and sell the pills, and then obtain more prescriptions from Burton for other people, who paid them for getting the prescriptions, according to prosecutors. Burton also supplied the co-defendants with blank prescriptions and instructed them on how to fill them out, prosecutors said.

Burton's sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 29.