Wednesday, September 29, 1999
Nurse sentenced for taking patient's morphine
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A former temporary nurse at Drake Center received a five-year suspended prison sentence Friday for stealing morphine meant for a patient and refilling the container with water.
Leslie A. Burchenal of Wyoming, 44, a registered nurse, is to remain in home confinement for the first two years, wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet.
That does not prevent her from working outside her home, her attorney, R. Scott Croswell, said.
U.S. District Judge Herman J. Weber also fined her $1,000 and ordered her to do 250 hours of community service.
She was the first person prosecuted in Southern Ohio under a 1983 law banning tampering with a consumer product. In the plea agreement, charges of taking morphine by fraud and illegal possession of morphine were dropped.
At the time of the tampering — October 1997 — Ms. Burchenal was working as a temporary at the Drake Center. Investigators said there was no evidence her patient was injected with the water.
Ms. Burchenal's Ohio nursing license was suspended after she was arrested and her plea agreement said she would not contest a decision to revoke it.
Ms. Burchenal was hired despite a history of substance abuse problems.
Ms. Burchenal got her nursing license from Ohio in 1979. She worked in Ohio, then moved to Virginia.
According to police and the Ohio State Board of Nursing, Ms. Burchenal's record of drug problems started in 1987 when she was put on proba tion for felony morphine possession in Culpeper County, Va.
In 1988, she was convicted of felony use of a forged prescription in Newport News, Va., and her nursing license in Virginia was suspended.
Ms. Burchenal returned to Ohio around 1990. The Ohio Board of Nursing suspended her license indefinitely in 1992, because of the suspension in Virginia.
She completed a drug rehabilitation program and regained her license in 1995.
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