Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images; Danny Moloshok / Reuters; Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images; Ning Chiu/ZUMApress.comUPDATE: Stern, Eroshevich and Kapoor are present in the courtroom this morning.
Documents have been filed and, as predicted, there are now 11 felony complaints against Stern, including accusations of using a false name to score Smith drugs. The doctors already faced similar charges and all three maintained their not guilty pleas.
The district attorney blamed a clerical omission on Stern's previously light charge count. In addition to the original charges, he now faces four counts of obtaining fraudulent prescriptions and one cout of prescribing, adminstering or dispensing controlled substances to an addict.
"I think that the case against Howard K. Stern is weak because they are holding him responsible for medical decisions made," Stern's attorney, Steven Sadow told E! News after the hearing. "[He] is not a doctor—he was relying on the doctors that were treating Anna. Excessiveness is in the eyes of the beholder."
All three are due back for a preliminary hearing on Oct. 5.
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This latest round of Anna Nicole Smith death allegations just got a bit more interesting...and salacious.
Photos of the model naked in a bathtub with her shrink, Dr. Khristine Eroshevich—the one whose name was on all 11 medications found in Smith's room at the time of her death—were discovered on a computer. Needless to say, these "various intimate embraces," as the court docs put it, don't exactly fit with a proper doctor-patient relationship.
Meanwhile, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor is being accused of having a physical relationship with Smith as well. Only Kapoor, who's also facing felony charges for helping to supply the drugs that led to Smith's death, is openly gay.
His attorney says Kapoor kept his exchanges with Smith strictly professional, and that this mistake is an example of the errors made that led to his charges in the first place. As for Eroshevich, her attorney claims the pair began as friends and neighbors and the nature of their connection evolved into a medical one. No comment on the naked photos, though.
More than two and a half years after her death in the Florida, the Anna Nicole drama doesn't stop there.
Defense lawyers have been given the heads-up that prosecutors are planning to file an amended complaint at the discovery hearing today.
Smith's attorney and longtime sidekick Howard K. Stern is likely to see his charges go from six to as many as 11. The attorney general has already named the star's lawyer boyfriend the "principal enabler." The doctors each face a half-dozen counts.
So far, Stern and the doctors have pleaded not guilty to all counts.
The preliminary hearing is set for Oct. 5, but that may change after today's status conference with Stern, Kapoor and Eroshevich's lawyers.
—Additional reporting by Ashley Fultz
(Originally published Sept. 23, 2009, at 9:04 a.m. PT)
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It's hard to keep up. We get it. That's why there's this.