you'll ship it to you or curbside pickup if you're in miami. thank you for joining us. stay safe. be well. hope we'll see each in person in miami some day soon. thank you for your work. >> thank you. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2. every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. booktv on c-span2. created by america's cable television companies. today we are brought to you by these television companies who provide booktv to viewer as a public service. >> tonight we're thrilled to have charlotte bismuth with her book "bad medicine." she started her legal career in and join the new york county district attorney's office in 2008 an a appellate attorney.

in 2010 she transferred into the office of the special nark particulars property which prosecutes felony narcotics crime. after the work on the brooks of dr. stan li. she left the da's -- she has called for accountability from pharma and other entity responsible for launching the opioid academy. sharelight is a consultant in the center of excellence, an organization dedicated to promoting best practices in constitution. she is a graduate of columbia university, columbia law school and the institute for political skins in paris temp lives in new york city with her husband and children. joining charlotte in conversation is patricia mccorporal make. a two-time national book award finalist, and she wrote never fall down, the true story of a

boy who survived the killing fields of cam bodie -- cambodia, and is he co author i am malala, the give who shot by the taliban and her fight for education. her book, the plot to till hitler was pressured in -- published in 2016. he first picture book about the little horsey who became a hero came out no 2017. she attend rosemont college, and has an msa from the new school and lives in new york. so, pries look charlotte bismuth and patricia mccormick to the stage. >> hi, everyone. thank you very much for coming. i'm charlotte.

>> i'm patty. >> we wanted to start off just by acknowledging that the action is not just on the screen with us, but in the audience tonight you are surrounded by people who made a very big difference in the lives of others. the book is the story from the frontlines of the opioid academy. there's young man named matt dingo who was the person who reported dr. li to the police help saved many lives. i just want to acknowledge his contribution tonight. also see that my partners, stephanie, investigator joe, senior trial counsel, peter are here and i thank them and all the court reporters and all of you for coming. because this was a case that resulted in so much loss of life we would like to start with a short moment of reflection. i've written out the names of a

few of the victims but we all have others in mind in our minds and in our hearts so we ick take a few moments to think about them. >> thank you. >> thank you charlotte. i'm very happy to be here tonight to help you launch this wonderful book. i am someone who nearly lost someone to the opioid academy so i'm grateful to you as are many people who are here tonight. i met charlotte at a reading that walter kern was giving and i instantly knew that she was writer. she is a very talented and tenacious prosecutor as well but i could tell that the soul of a

writer lived in her. and some very happy to see this book has come to fruition. i also have the honor of seeing her in court. i was so intrigued by the story she was pursuing -- the case she was pursuing that i went to see her in court, and so i can picture many of the scenes that are in this story, and saw her doing her finest work there. so, as many of you know, i know that many people in the audience are familiar with the book, have been part of the investigation, had family and loved ones who were involved in this case, but for those who may not know, it is a wonderful page-turning legal thriller about a dirty

doctor who ran a pill lab that resulted in the deaths of many people, and charlotte and her team pursued him starting with just a tip that came in on a post-it note and made legal history in prosecuting this doctor for homicide. so, charlotte, i wonder if you would just start at that moment of receiving the tip. i know you mentioned the tipster is with us tonight and has allowed you make his name public for the first time but if you could talk about the first -- when the case first came to you. >> thank you, and, yes issue should have mentioned that. i do have his permission tonight to reveal his name, which is a pseudonym in the book. eddie. so, in 2010 i was a relatively junior prosecutor at the office of the special narcotics prosecutor, and we received a

tip. my office had been noticing a significant and concerning upcontinuing in prescription drug crimes, and that night my boss handed me also note with a detective's name, doctor's name, and an address, 49th street in queens. now, she said that the tipster had said only that this was doctor who was prescribing medications to kids who didn't need them. and of course it was serious enough to have been reported but also as a prosecutor's office we didn't know whether we were the right ones to handle the case because doctors prescribe medication, that it what that it do. so, for the first few weeks i did background research on the dr. li. he had senior investigator, joe hall, veteran nypd detective

come on the case. we had trouble getting a receive with the complainant and joe hall was able to track down the brave young man and bring him in for a conversation with us and it was at that point we understood that we might be dealing with a very unique situation, doctor who had a sign up in his office on which he advertised the price of his services per pill, per prescription, with extra fee if you came early with extra fee if you were also receiving controlled substances from other doctors. a doctor who didn't care about his patients suffering in the sense that he didn't investigate their pain, he didn't send them out for diagnostic tests. all he did was write a prescription, ask for the money and as so many patients over so many years who followed he took that money and put it in the

pocket of his white coat. on that night with that little post-it note i had no idea that the case would change my life and thanks to the complainant it would saving lives and bringing some measure of closure to families who were really in a tremendous amount of suffering after their loss -- the loss or if the loved ones, thinking they'd had been the ones to fail. >> that's an point point i wanted to pick up on, the role of the loved ones in helping you see this case through. and your connection with them and the way in which you kept their concerns front and center at all times, to be aware of the real human victims of this case. >> from the very beginning the case was about human beings and human suffering.

dr. li twisted that to say he had been deceived by patients who were lying to them and saying they were in pain, but the real pain was among those patients and those families who had been either seeking a legitimate physician who would help them with their condition or who had been suffering from opiode use disorder and were visibly consecutive distressed, visibly requiring assistance or referral, and dr.ly monetized their suffering. when we realized that human beings, patients, had been betrayed by a physician and that the families actually in some cases knew quite a bit because they knew their loved one, their child or father or sister was seeing a doctor, and they felt in trust because of that, and i think specifically of joseph haig's sister who told us he was seeing a doctor, so it was okay

just to take himself and his final moments, wrote a note to his family and said i haven't used illegal drugs in years. so there was this profound betrayal at work, and it became really crucial to us to connect with the patients, with the survivors, with the families, and have them come forward and have them tell the jury what they had seen and that this was actually really about a man driven by greed. >> i remember in the book that you kept the a picture of one victim, maybe others but you kept one on your desk as the investigation started. >> i actually had a photo of a young man named nicholas who passed away at the able of 21, and on the day of the opening statement, i was petrified,

beyond petrified, especially because the beginning of the trial had been put off from one day to the next to the next, and i just wanted to remind myself of why we were there. i think anybody who has considered the becoming a prosecutor who has served in that role knows that serving the victims especially the ones who cannot speak for themselves, is really a sacred duty, and for me to have the fate of nicholas' life who was interrupted, whose mother had back very important person in my life, and that reminded me of why we were there, and it allowed me to overcome the -- well maybe not overcome itch won't lie. didn't overcome the nerves but to push through. >> i'm going to read an excerpt from a letter that was sent by one of the families to dr. li. this letter is in regards to our daughter and your patient, as

she is in very bad shape of mentally and physically as well. please, you must stop prescribing these deadly doses of drugs range. from methadone to you name it. she is one foot away from a serious od. what was it like to meet dr. li the first time? >> well, after reading those patient files and reading that letter and note recording his conversations with other parents, when i first saw him on the day of arraignment, it was a relief to know we had shut down his clinic, that was in novembe. we also knew it was the beginning of a long journey because we still had so much work to do to trace back the criminal conduct and capture it through the actions of another grand jury. but i think i can safely speak

for my trial partner, peter, and for joe hall and everybody else who worked on the case, that it was an enduring mystery to know how he had come to sit in front of these men and women and write out prescriptions and take that cash and even have the presence of mind to require the extra $5m his path. something i won't understand ever. sadly we learned recently that dr. li died in prison of covid, and of course i know that everyone who worked on the case feels -- nobody deserves a lonely and isolated death, and i think it also points out the fact we'll never know, but with respect to the letter you read, that letter shockingly had been

submitted to dr. li in 2007, and we found it in the patient files in 2011, and not only had dr. li continued to prescribe and sell prescriptions after that dead and continued to prescribe their very medication those parents were begging him to stop. >> you describe a shabby operation, shabby place, as you said, the prices are posted on the walls, almost like sandwich prices as a deli. can you talk about the long, painstaking process you and the investigators and your partner went through to make sure you had the case you wanted to bring. >> i think everyone from the team who is on this crowdcast right now is probably having flashbacks to very long, heated

debates, very long meetings, and conference rooms, sessions going through 1,200 facial files page by pages, reading them on our own, reading them to each other, escalating them to our supervisors. we had a incredible consultant on the homicide front, nancy ryan, who has served as mr. morgan that's right-hand woman as chief othe trial division. she name to vet the homicide cases cases and educate us about what would be required. it was very tough it and was daunting because of course you want to bring charges that capture the criminal conduct, but at the same time you don't want to overreach and endanger the case. so, it involved a lot of legal research. we -- the letter that you read, again we combed through the patient files looking for a couple of things. we were looking for patients who

had -- whose vulnerability had been visible or known to dr. li, meaning maybe their fissions called dr. li as in the case of michael corretta, whose emergency room psychiatrist called dr. li and said your patient is in the en an overdose and dr. li continued to prescribe. patients like nicholas who had only been a few times to see dr. li with a bare bones complain of pain and with sometimes months going between visits, who dr. li knew were getting substances from other doctors and yet he continued to prescribe. so, gradually we built up this filtering process where even though there was a tremendous universe of harm, he had over 1200 patientses. 16 patients died of overcoasts

while under his care or a year of leaving his a practice but we had to filter it down and gradually brought it down 20 patients. we presented evidence to a grand jury. there were -- i can't remember the exact number of grand juries god over a dozen men and women who came in and heard a case over a period of six months, heard evidence and voted on 218 charges against dr. li, including two counts of homicide. >> was there one moment when you really caught an incredible break in the case and things turned, or conversely was there one or maybe more moments where you thought, not going to happen? >> i would find a letter every minute of every day for four years, we felt we were walking a tightrope. i was such a broad and complex

case. trying to keep track of all the medical records, and all the patients and all the testimony was difficult, but there were breaks in the case, and those breaks came in part because of that obsessive work we were doing. i remember one day good 201 when joe hall and i were in a conference room, the investigator's floor, big conference room, little bit dusty, joe, you should know that -- and we had been in there for hours and had in front of us boxes and boxes of materials that had been seized from dr. li's home in new jersey, and so we were going through really page by page, going through receipts, going through -- he kept ledgers with the names of every patient who had seen him on every day that he was open, and the amount of money they had paid him, and then at one point we came across a yellow folder,

and that yellow folder there were a couple of loose sheets of the same format as dr. li's patient files, and so joe and i were sort of puzzled as to why they had been in new jersey, why they weren't with the files they belongs to, and as often happened when i was working with joe we would sort of look at each other and then he ran off to locker to grab the patient files that belongs to those sheets and compared them and we realized that "d" li had fuels snide of his patient reports and why did this matters it? matter because those patients were -- his treatment of those patients was under screwed scrutiny by the state board so we had consciousness of guilt. an awareness that his road's indiana quit and his practice was inadequate it and was criminal it and was hurting

them. so, that moment i think was a real turning point because we knew that it had been about the money, but to have this very compelling evidence of dr.ly's lack of credibility, not only made us feel like we were on the right track but we knew that was important evidence to present to a grand jury and to a trial. i would add that these moments which are portrayed in hollywood and sort of happen and then everything fine, that's not how it happens in reality, and peter would tell you that even spent easily dozenses of hours painstakingly comparing every sheet of paper in each of the 20 patient files for each victim in trial to make sure there were no differences and to show the jury the extent of the falsification, so it was a couple hours of testimony at trial and behind that there was so much work by

peter and the witness in preparing for that moment, and i do think it made a big difference to the jury. >> i. reading -- correct me if i'm wrong -- the dea had come to talk to him or warn him and you mentioned the state as well. what failed to catch him before this point? >> dr. li when he was confront bid the dea in 2009 assured them that he was don ducting fill examples for every patient. the few occasioned when we was asked for patient files infor instance when state oversight agency contacted him or i on one occasion even when a medical

examiner contacted him he falsified the records help also had a full-time job in a very well-respected hospital in new jersey and there are no complaints help was very well-qualified doctors. an needs anesthesiologist so it was he knew how to bring people into a state of unconsciousness and then safely bring them bam. in addition to everything little he enjoyed the privilege of his status, enjoyed the trust of the dea and of society, and i think that is what allowed him to continue exploiting the pain of his patients for so long. >> this is very much a story of the team, the people you worked with, and in particular your relationship with your colleague, peter. can you talk about the many miles that the two of you have

traveled. >> yes. peter, who has heard -- who heard an early draft of at the book was kind enough and up surprisingly for his character sort of brave enough to tell me -- this is literally what he told me -- you have -- you are allowed to talk about the difficulties we had, and that meant so much because i think that the level of respect and friendship i have for peter now comes not only from having been in the trenches together with joe, with stephanie, with all the brave witnesses who came forward and also comes from having had to butt heads as built and then talk about win. had a remarkable number of vary awkward discussions during the preparation for the trial and the trial, why can't we agree on

anything and the fact is that we did have a lot of disagreements, but our styles were so complimentary. i tended to sort of overstretch beyond what was absolutely necessary to prove the case, and peter, who had actually tried not just a few homicides before but many homicides before, would bring me back and say this is what we need to focus on. this it what really matters and that is absolutely essential, and so to have his blessing to tell the truth about what a productive working relationship is like, what does it mean to really go through a test of endurance, like that, was very meaningful and also i went to read the book to peter, and inevitably there would be either his son or somebody else,

meaningful to him there with us and i knew that it was just an incredible experience to read it to him and have his feedback and also have somebody else there to respond. it was like being in the editing room for but for a book. >> you have developed a real friendship out of this in the end. >> for my part, yes if hope peter would agree. >> charlotte you also bear of yourself in the book, the narrative of your own life runs parallel to the narrative of the case, and i can't imagine that was easy to be as honest as you were. can you talk about that decision a little bit. >> yes, first i will avoid that question by saying that the story is not just about the friendship with peter but my tremendous respect for him and

joe hall and the amount of work they did. knew i had on setted over the case but they also brought decade of experience so working with the two of them was transformative it and actually really, really helped me deal with what was happening in my life because i was learning how to channel it. yes, it was terrifying to talk about the personal aspects but again, i come to believe it's really important to lift the curtain on the reality of prosecution, the reality of crime, the reality of the so-called work-life balance, which is think is as one friend said there's no work-life balance, just work-life choices and it was hard i asked my children if it was okay with them. they set certain limits and i respected the limits and as for the depression and anxiety, i think i have come to understand

a lot about the stigma attached not just to opioid use disorder also to mental health issues and they're a struggle to conform to expectations that needs to be discussed, and it would have been such a relief to me to know that others were experiencing the same thing. i received so many heartfelt messages from my team members about it now, and the fact is that working with them changed everything. >> for me as a reader it made me feel much closer to you and, therefore, more trusting of everything that you said because you were willing to be honest about the stress and strain of your job, what was happening in your marriage. so i'm happy to hear you have

gotten feedback from other readers that's been a meaningful piece of the back to them. >> i think that especially for young professionals the messages i've gotten are that they have felt these things but never said them, and obviously of course one of the other themes of the book is that i may have been experiencing difficulty but the families and victims that i was working with were not just still struggling with the aftermath of dr. li but they were brave enough to come forward. so, whatever i was experiencing, being nervous on the first day or trying to put this case together and get my documents in order, was absolutely nothing compared to what we were asking of them. what we were asking of them was to come forward and tell a grand jury and then a jury about their

past, their struggles, even about the fact they may have told dr. li lies in order to have him prescribe more, and asking a jury to believe them, and then subjecting themselves to cross-examination, which i think in the case of one young woman, michael's girlfriend, resulted in terrible pain because dr. li's defense attorney confronted her with the fact that her own physician had been prescribing her boyfriend in addition to dr. li, separate physician who treated her had been prescribing her boyfriend a staggering number of pills and she collapsed. the judge became very angry in that moment. he, i think, felt that it had been unnecessary to call her to the stand. that had been a very difficult decision. we all had a very hard time

after that day, but ultimately she said that it had been important for her to do it and unanimously the witnesses felt that they had made a difference and they really did. they saved lives by telling the truth. >> charlotte, it was really a pleasure to see you in the courtroom, and to see you as an attorney. i'm curious about the writer part of your identity as well. it's your first book, and it's very well-done, and you employed a very ambitious, i think, structure, going back and forth in time. it might have been easier especially if you're somebody who is used to building a legal brief to do things in order or do things chronologically. i loved that because i thought it built a lot of tension. can you talk about the writing

process and how you made that does this. >> yes. so, i think that compliment should be accept not but me but by jessica in the audience tonight, and who is an extraordinary editor who worked with me on the final draft of the book. actually semi final -- well, many, many drafts of the book, and she kept telling me you have to trust your reader and you're absolutely right. i had a tendency that my colleagues, nancy and peter, had called out before which was to want to do this sort of exhaustive layout, and it was unnecessary, and they would both take my emotions or whatever i was writing and bring them down to the essential and have this incredibly rigorous editing process and jed jessica did the same as did my editor, with the book and she really felt -- and

i have to agree -- that it was a way to allow the reader to experience the parallel between building the case and my life, and also as a prosecutor, you don't get the pieces in order, and i also wanted to think about that moment in time when my life intersectedded with dr. li, the moment of arraignment in november 2011, and i was thinking about what had been happening that i didn't know about before. what was experiencing and then how that intersection changed everything. so it was sort of an nods todd -- structure but jessica taught me how to let go of that perfectionism and focus on the moment that expressed the story. >> and i think you told me that the red pen edity treatment you

got on your briefs helped you to develop a sense for how good it is to be ed kit. painful but mack is better. >> a team makes everything better. i always thought ahead to go it alone, team makes everything better. it can be a challenge to learn how to work with a team, how to delegate but when you're fortunate enough as i am to work as i was to work not only with people who had a tremendous amount of experience but with people who had incredibly powerful brains and instincts, like stephny and others, and under the leadership of bilge jet who -- bridget 'owho had a lot of guts of going after the doctor so on my own i won't have

done is in and none of the people in the book and in life would have been able to reach the point of accountability for dr. li. >> how and win did you know it was book in being -- that you need teed prosecute the individual and you needed to create a record and the document and a drama about it. >> i felt that the trial had been the book. building a case for trial is very similar in some ways to writing a book. when the trial was over, i remember joe hall and i stepping out into the street and looking at each other and thinking so now what? we can't believe it's over. and the fact is that it had been such an intense experience for everyone involved, that other than doing what we had to do to

prepare the case for appeals and whatever might come next, we didn't really talk about it, and i didn't want to write about it. i wrote actually a very bad novel before i wrote the book, and then realized that my husband, who had been telling me for years that this was a story i should write, maybe had a point. so i have to credit him for that. >> and what are you working on now? >> i'm working on a couple of things. i have been following the perdue bankruptcy and booking with sacra pain, an advocacy couldy group who is fight fog accountability at the national level with members of the sackler family and purdue, so i have actually started drawing cartoons related to the bankruptcy as a way of communicating what is going on in a more user friendly manner

and i think i might try to do something there, maybe a graphic novel of sorts and partnership with some experts, and there are couple of other books i'm thinking of. the beauty of bag writer rather than an attorney for me is that i feel more freedom to draw on every other part of my life and i think there are some attorneys like bridget, like peter who are able to bring at that time into their work but for me write bought the law, translating the jargon, translating the procedure, is much more my calling even though i really miss the investigation. >> there is anything left undone or left unsaid if you could put an epilogue in the book or more you would want readers to know, what it would be today?

>> well, i would like to give a voice -- a direct voice to the families who were involved, and for them if they feel inclined, to tell the story from their perspective, and i think also one thing that really bothered me is we have lost nearly 500,000 lives in the opioid epidemic. it is unspeakable and there hasn't been any mourning, any grieving on a collective level. we hear stories individually and one of the thingses that really was difficult and incredible working on the book was everybody i ran into would say i also know someone, and that's traumatizing for us as a country, and i think we have to face that and deal with it and talk about it, and i would like to hear everybody's stories and

like to hear stories of people who are fighting back and i would like to draw attention to the legal proceedings where we have a chance of getting accountantability such at the purdue bankruptcy, such as hopefully criminal prosecutions. >> so you and your colleagues notched a win in a -- an academy or world we don't very often see wins, don't very often see accountability, do you think the epidemic is on the wane? >> no. unfortunately, the cdc recently released statistics showing that in the 12 months between may 2019 and may 2020, 81,000 people had lost their lives to overdoses, which far outpaced the 12 preceding months the combination of the covid

epidemic and the pandemic has led to a horrific sense of isolation, led to reduction of harm -- reduction of -- many of the programs were already in danger because of stigma and sort of a not in my backyard lobbying evident but he if we need anything we needs to help people stay alive. give them a chance to stay alive until they are able to pick a different path if that is what they want to do. and i wish -- i never imagined that on the day this book would come out or this week it would have gotten worse but it has. >> well, if it means there are other doctor lis out there and other people read this book, it shows that the prosecution --

the successful prosecution is possible. so thank you. so, we'd like to open it up now to our audience to see what we questions we have for charlotte. >> a lot of excellent questions here, thank you. firstly, how do you feel about modern criminal justice reform and how they may impact criminal charges against medical professionals. >> well, one of -- there were a couple of changes made to the law in new york state during and after the dr. li case. during the case i thought -- implemented which created a system where doctors had to check whether their patients were receiving controlled substances from other physicians, and so that kind of forced transparency was

important. other changes were the criminal statutes were changed to include pharmacists and physicians in the definition of certain crimes and that's essential. there can be a bias built into the law that just because you have been to medical school, you can't sell prescriptions -- or can't be guilty of selling a prescription. now, i think that one of the biggest -- i mean there have been many doctor prosecutions and especially by the office of the special nark particulars -- narcotics prosecutor which focuses on exposing the greeds of dirty doctors and holding them accountability but we need to do that at a national level, with the corporate executives who launched the opioid

epidemic. systemic actors who profited. they can't be above the law and the some of the laws on the book, like reckless man lawsuit may well apply and they should be purr suicide. >> okay. , out of curiasty do you have an idea of hour dr. li treateds the noncash cow patients? what we vigilant about addiction potential? when some who claim to the christianic and cashing in on the vulnerable. >> whoever submitted that question is thinking like prosecutor and that is not just question of curiosity but a crucial question because we were trying to understand his state of mind, his intent, trying too toe see what in fact his clinic was about. we learned that even though there were no sales of highly

addictive substances before a certain date, which was somewhere around 2007 or, so the patients he was seeing before then were vehicles for insurance fraud. so, he was seeing a population of mostly elderly patients with chronic pain conditions stemming from old age and illnesses, and he would double bill or he would otherwise falsify insurance records to maximize the amount of money he was making so we were able too present evidence of those schemes to defraud to the grand jury and i think that was crucial part of the case because the jury saw that from the very beginning there was a great just driving this side hustle he had on the weekends. . >> okay. have a question forgot dawn. this book would make a great movie. it that's something you would about interested in pursuing in

the future? >> don was one of the heroic court stenographers on the case who sat through hours of exhaustive tonight. lot of court stenographers. thank you. i don't know. i think it can be a blessing and a curse to have a cinematic life, so right now my purpose is to draw attention to the need for accountability and that's all i can speak to. >> this one is a little more personal. who inspires you, charlotte. >> guest: do you have a hero you look up to? >> i do. i would say matt dingo and margaret and aaron, kristin haig, joe hall, peter,

stephanie, bridget, the people who i have seen working so hard, putting one foot in front of the other, through the impossible. and i think of them every day. and i also -- there's another young woman whose name is andrea howard in the book, who told dr. li that her father had killed himself in front of her, that she wanted to kill herself, and she was in such suffering he pushed her to bring and she agreed to testify and when he testified she held a stuffed animal in her arms and after the trial she gave it to me so she's my hero. >> i'm not going to tear up. >> i am. she's one of the bravest people i've ever met. she's my hero. >> that's incredibly brave. we have a question from jordan. thank you, charlotte and patricia for doing this, charlotte, you touched on this briefly but i wonder if you can

say more but your reaction to hearing about li's death. you said it was undeserved but bid you trouble in come topping that conclusion but the man who as you proved at trial took lives. >> i didn't because he was sentenced to a term in prison, he was not sentenced to death. i am strongly opposed to the death penalty. i believe that those who are in the custody of the government deserve to be protected, and that he should have been able too serve his term and return to his family. and i -- having seen the pain of people who lost loved ones in an untimely manner and having seen the devastation of covid, there wasn't a moment of hesitation. >> okay. a question from calley. charlotte, you mentioned harm

reduction. other could you speak but the policy implications of what you learned from the trial. >> so, i have undergone a real sea change with respect to opiode use disorder, which i think many of us in the law enforcement community, because the laws are written a certain way, are -- tend to see the criminality in that rather than the medical disease, and i believe that if we recognize as the medical community has, the legitimate medical community has, the -- [loss of audio] -- reduce the suffering, so, i believe not just that harm reduction should exist but that it is an urgent need right now. from what i've learned recently, it is much more painful to

inexpect with a needle that has been used than not to and addiction is already -- can already be a state of suffering. why wouldn't we help keep people alive? there's also a family from the case who lost their brother, who was patient of dr. li's, and subsequently they lost their son, and their son died alone. he was young there was fentanyl laced in the substance he was using. harm reduction can allow for safer injection sites which i know are very controversial but again, nobody wants people to die alone and unnecessarily. i think we need to set aside some of our thinking on that for those of us who maybe struggle to accept it, and just save lives. >> what if any role did the

judge's personality play in the trial? >> he kept us on a very tight rope. it was very hard for him i think as it was for everyone to keep track of all the witnesses and exhibits we had 72 witnesses the trial went over four months and its wasn't just the victims and witnesses who would have had so much to lose if the case had turned into a mistrial, but the judge as well. he really worked very, very hard and i think that must have been an incredibly stressful experience, and i appreciate the difficulty of what he had to do. i did think it was ironic that sometimes he would remark on our facial expressions because i was working so hard on my poker face, but what can you do? >> and i think we have time for one last question.

what do you think is a realistic outcome and perhaps separately a proper outcome on the sackler lawsuits. >> well, all of the sackler lawsuits have been essentially frozen now because after the bankruptcy proceeding. i think the members of the sackler family should not be granted a release from civil immunity as a result of the bankruptcy. they should be criminally prosecuted, and i think the people who suffered should be able to recover. they can't recover the lives and the time they have lost, but maybe they can have some financial compensation and i fear that is not the direction the bankruptcy is going in right now. >> okay. i think that's all the time we have for tonight. thank you, both of you forks joining us, for talking about these very heavy but very important topics that are really

a part of our lives on a daily basis. thank you or wonderful audience for joining us tonight. is there anything that either of you would like to say to the audience before we sign off? >> just thank you. thank you for being here and i know every one ofous is trying to make a difference so keep working. it's working and su for hosting and thank you, patty. >> my pleasure. >> we're watching booktv on c-span2. create by america's cable television companies. today we're brought to you'll by these television companies who provide booktv to viewers as a public service. >> tonight on booktv in primetime, democrat

representative mad lien dean of pennsylvania and her son discuss his drug addiction and recovery. stanford university law professor richard thompson ford looks at how dress code have been used to maintain social and political hierarchy throughout history. nationally radio host eric metaxas discuss his career, and ali argues there's been an increase in sexual assault in europe due immigration and james patterson and retire army ranger matt eversman profile men and women who fought in u.s. wars going back to vietnam. visit booktv.org for consult your program guide for more information. >> hello. i'm katy. eye director for civil society and the american dialogue at the heritage foundation. i'm very pleased to welcome you to this very timely and important webinar. when i attended graduate school at the london school after economics, granted this was some years ago i