⚖ Oral Arguments, with Context

The D.C. Circuit hears Dr. Ndubuisi Okafor’s appeal from convictions arising from his Northwest Washington medical practice. Prosecutors said Okafor wrote cash-paid prescriptions for oxycodone and promethazine with codeine after minimal examinations and sent other prescriptions, sometimes in false names, across the country. A jury convicted him of conspiracy, maintaining a drug-involved premises, and twenty-two unlawful distributions; he received eighteen years. At trial, defense physician Dr. Joe Ybarra reviewed recordings of four undercover patient visits and concluded that Okafor acted within legitimate medical practice. The judge allowed that testimony but barred Ybarra from extending the same conclusion to seventeen other prescriptions for which he had no patient-interaction evidence. Okafor says that restriction left him unable to answer the government’s expert, and that the jury instructions diluted Ruan’s requirement that prosecutors prove he knowingly or intentionally prescribed without authorization. The government says the opinion was unsupported speculation, the instructions required subjective intent, and the sentence should stand.

United States v. Ndubuisi Okafor (No. 25-3073) — U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, argued September 14, 2026.