ABINGDON, Va. — A southwestern Virginia doctor has been convicted of improperly prescribing opioid medications a second time, after his first conviction was overturned due to one word in the jury instructions.

Joel Smithers, 42, a former osteopathic doctor in Martinsville, was convicted by a federal jury on Saturday, following 12 days of testimony and two days of deliberations. The jury found him guilty of one count of maintaining a place for unlawfully distributing controlled substances and 393 counts of unlawfully distributing controlled substances without a legitimate medical need from 2015 to 2017.

Smithers was first charged in 2017 and at his first trial in 2019, he was convicted of total of 715 counts and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

In that first trial, witnesses testified that Smithers often saw patients through Facetime because he only came to the office one or two days a week, and he continued prescribing to patients even when they failed drug tests. Witnesses also said many of the patients didn’t pay for their services, instead relying on two men who paid their bills in exchange for half of their prescriptions.

But in February, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new trial because the judge’s instructions to the jury said they could determine the prescriptions were unauthorized if they were prescribed “without a legitimate medical purpose or beyond the bounds of medical practice.” The court said the instructions should have used the word “and” instead of “or,” meaning they could only convict him if both elements were proven instead of just one.

This month, Smithers went back on trial, this time facing 857 counts instead of 715, but he was only convicted of 394. He will now be sentenced in March.

However, despite being found not guilty of 321 charges in the second trial, Smithers did suffer a different type of setback, after his father, Mark Smithers, was charged with a felony.

In an affidavit filed with the court, a DEA special agent reported that Mark Smithers approached a juror outside the courthouse on Dec. 17 and after first talking about the weather, suggested the juror should “have compassion” when in the trial.

That juror was ultimately dismissed and Mark Smithers has now been charged with influencing a juror. He is due to appear in court Jan. 14 for a preliminary hearing.