John Tierney looks further at the decisions by the jury in the Hurwitz trial:

But these jurors bought the prosecution’s argument that medical negligence was a crime. They decided that a doctor’s role as a drug cop was so important that even if he had no criminal motive, he should be sent to prison if a group of laymen looked over his records and decided that they would have done it differently. These jurors worked hard, but they had an impossible job. It’s hard enough for a medical review board of doctors to judge a colleague’s actions when deciding whether to revoke his license. It’s hard enough for medical experts to judge negligence when they pore over all the details in a single malpractice case. This lay jury essentially had to decide 19 malpractice cases at once.