Doctor Guilty on Drug Charge, Gets 18 Months of Probation

A Bethesda physician was found guilty Tuesday of cocaine possession in a case a Montgomery County judge said represented the "scourge on society" caused by illegal drugs.

"You should know that," the judge told Eric Greenberg, whose office and home on Old Georgetown Road was raided April 1 by federal and county agents.

The trial lasted about four hours and was decided not by a jury but by District Judge Gary G. Everngam. He sentenced Greenberg to 18 months of probation.

During the April search, police said they found a bag containing 1.2 grams of cocaine in the upstairs living area of the house. Police said they also found trace amounts of cocaine elsewhere in the residence.

Greenberg's attorney, James Papirmeister, said Greenberg didn't know of any cocaine in the residence, where his wife and brother-in-law were also living at the time of the raid.

"I did not know it was in my house," Greenberg said from the witness stand. The doctor said he did at one point see a white powdered substance but thought it was his wife's Ritalin.

The Maryland Board of Physicians suspended Greenberg's license after the raid. Just before he was sentenced Tuesday, Greenberg asked the judge for understanding: "I was hoping that one day I'd have a chance to practice medicine again. . . . Please let me go home to my wife."

His wife, Jaquenette I. Fischman, said in an interview before the trial that her husband doesn't do drugs. "This has been devastating," she said of the case. "This has destroyed our practice and destroyed our lives."