Rewind: When judge denied bid to lift sentence for 551-pound convicted pharmacist

A Florida judge has refused to lift the house arrest sentence of convicted pharmacist Steven Goodman, who weighs 551 pounds and whose lawyer argued the restriction had become “unnecessary and futile,” Salon reports.

Goodman was sentenced in 2012 to 30 months of house arrest for supplying a million prescriptions for oxycodone and other drugs in a Florida “pill mill” operation, receiving a lighter punishment than his co-conspirators because, according to the Orlando Sentinel, “he can’t dress or bathe himself, and prison beds wouldn’t accommodate him.”

His attorney, Edward Page, argued in court papers that Goodman’s condition already confines him to his home, adding that doctors had given him less than a year to live due to a fatal lymph disease and that he wished to travel to Ohio to say goodbye to family before he dies.

However, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra rejected the bid, questioning how Goodman could realistically travel to Ohio given his described condition.

“Defendant was spared a prison sentence, not as a favor to him, but in order to spare the Bureau of Prisons the burden of having to care for him,” Marra said, adding that if Goodman’s health truly confines him at home, “continuation of that restriction will not adversely affect him.”

The case underscores a broader dilemma facing the justice system in handling elderly, ailing or severely obese offenders who strain its resources without posing an active threat — leaving courts to weigh mercy against accountability with no easy answers in sight.