Horse neglect
Sacramento, CA (US)Incident Date: Friday, Nov 10, 2006
County: Sacramento
Disposition: Alleged
Case Images: 1 files available
Alleged: Roscoe Martin, MD
Dr. Roscoe Martin, the Sacramento orthopedist accused of neglecting horses on his Wilton ranch, has a history of legal trouble and more looming.
While Sacramento County Animal Care officers were herding some of his starved animals to safety in October, Martin was on home detention, serving a 21-day sentence for felony perjury and insurance fraud, stemming from a 2002 auto accident.
Martin doesn't deny wrongdoing in either case. But he maintains that his scrapes with the law are more reflective of a medical and legal environment unfriendly to African Americans than on his own judgment and actions.
"I strongly feel that if I were not black, this never would have gotten to the point that it is," he said in an interview, referring to his most recent spate of problems.
The 64-year-old talked about his troubles, and his long and sometimes rocky medical career, last week after seeing patients in his 37th Avenue office near Stockton Boulevard. Martin is now the sole tenant in the aging, single-story building, where he first hung his nameplate nearly 25 years ago.
Tall, balding and avuncular-looking with wire-rimmed glasses, Martin works in an office that sits at the end of a hall decorated with posters of notable black men -- Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Medical books, family photos and various certificates -- including one from Sacramento's Lorenzo Patino School of Law, where he completed a degree in 1987 -- fill the office.
Orthopedics, he said, was a specialty that suited his personality. "I like to look at a problem and try to figure out how to fix it," he said.
A graduate of Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., Martin's career as an orthopedic surgeon in Sacramento began at the former Mather Air Force Base, from 1979 to 1982. He later worked for a couple of years at the now defunct Sacramento Community Hospital.
But the bulk of his work has been with low-income, injured patients who come to him for routine orthopedic care.
(Martin said that while he had performed surgery at Methodist Hospital in the early 1990s, he couldn't keep up with the malpractice insurance costs, and he lost his privileges in 1996, unable to provide regular on-call service in the emergency room. Catholic Healthcare West officials could only say Martin was on the Methodist Hospital roster at some point.)
"I am the only African American orthopedic surgeon that has ever been in private practice in Sacramento County," Martin said, adding that about 65 percent of his patients are black.
Most are referred from medical groups that serve patients on Medi-Cal, the state's health insurance program for low-income and disabled people. Martin also handles workers' compensation and personal injury cases.
"I never made a lot of money like the big guys," he said. "But money was not my driving force. My driving force was to do the best I could in my chosen profession."
A review of California Medical Board and Sacramento Superior Court records shows that Martin's legal and professional difficulties date back to 1985.
That's the year the medical board, citing three patient cases, revoked his license for "gross negligence" and placed him on probation. Martin fought the disciplinary action in court and won a dismissal of the accusation. An appeals court concurred, documents show.
A decade later, Martin was convicted of fraud in a workers' compensation case and served 300 hours of community service. His conviction again prompted the medical board to revoke his license and stay the revocation pending completion of probation.
Martin strenuously maintains his innocence in that case, arguing he was wrongly accused and pressured into pleading no contest.
"I did absolutely nothing wrong," he said. "But the insurance department and the medical board are powerful. Whatever they want to do, they can do."
Most recently, Martin was convicted of perjury and fraud in a case stemming from an auto accident in which he and another driver collided head-on and he suffered a shoulder injury.
According to a California Department of Insurance investigator's report, Martin demanded more than $57,000 in damages from the other driver's insurance company.
During litigation, investigators discovered that Martin had been uninsured, and not entitled to damages for pain and suffering.
Martin eventually admitted altering a lapsed insurance policy to make it look like he was covered, and submitting it to the other party's insurance company under penalty of perjury.
Still, Martin maintains discrimination was a factor in his case. "You will see white physicians who have done many more things criminally than this, and they were breezed over," he said.
Misdemeanor charges related to the treatment of his horses could worsen matters, potentially adding time to his current sentence, according to the District Attorney's Office.
The equine case was not the first involving authorities responding to complaints about animals on his ranch.
In 2003, animal care officers answered neighbors' concerns about 22 roosters on Martin's property that were apparently used for cockfighting.
The birds were impounded and 16 were turned over to the county for euthanasia. Martin said that although the roosters were on his land, they did not belong to him, but to one of his ranch hands.
Last spring, one of his ranch workers returned to Mexico, and Martin said he fell behind in his horses' feeding schedule.
"I obviously wasn't feeding them enough," Martin said. "But I was giving them a lot." He said he never knowingly neglected the animals and wouldn't want them back unless he could "do right by them. I can't, I'm too old. I don't have the strength or time."
Asked what motivated him to acquire and breed horses, some of them thoroughbreds, he paused for several moments and smiled wistfully. "You know, one of the most beautiful things you can see is a racehorse as he is coming around the corner heading to the finish line," he said.
As for his own finish line, Martin said he hopes to retire after working one more year. References« CA State Animal Cruelty Map
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