⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The Fourth Circuit hears David Hess's appeal from convictions arising from his medical practice in Bridgeport, West Virginia. The DEA began investigating his prescribing in late 2018, and agents later searched the clinic and seized patient records and his iPhone. A jury convicted Hess on four counts of unlawfully distributing Adderall and one obstruction count tied to an attempted remote wipe of that phone. It acquitted him on sixteen other distribution counts, and the district judge sentenced him to two years in prison. The appeal asks whether the court correctly rejected a claim of juror bias, whether the DEA investigation was a pending agency proceeding under Section 1505, and whether the judge wrongly excluded evidence about the patient's later diagnosis or allowed the government's prescribing expert to testify. The case remains pending; the Fourth Circuit took it under advisement.

United States v. David Hess (No. 25-4511) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, argued September 16, 2026.