Jacqueline Cleggett Biography

Dr. Jacqueline Cleggett was a pediatrician turned pain management doctor who was under investigation on allegations of running a pill mill in Louisiana. She is the doctor in the center of Netflix show ‘The Pharmacist’ which originally aired on February 5, 2020.

Jacqueline Cleggett Age

Cleggett was born on August 9, 1962 in Mississippi, USA.

Jacqueline Cleggett Education – Jacqueline Cleggett Medical School

Jacqueline attended the Morehouse School of Medicine, at a historically black university in Atlanta. She completed her residency program in internal medicine and pediatrics at LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans.

Jacqueline Cleggett Husband

Jacqueline was married to an emergency room physician but they divorced. They had three children together which Jacqueline got custody of after the divorce. She is currently married to a man named David Howard.

Jacqueline Cleggett Medical Career

Cleggett began her career as a family practitioner, she started a job at Gulf South Medical Consultants, where she specialized in soft tissue exams for personal injury clients. She soon after opened up her own small private practice in New Orleans East. She later quit Gulf South, claiming it became ‘too demanding’.

The Times- Picayune wrote; “Throughout the 1990s, court depositions show, Cleggett pursued an ambitious if itinerant medical career in New Orleans. After a brief stint as a family practitioner, she found higher pay as a contractor for Gulf South Medical Consultants, where she specialized in soft tissue exams for personal injury clients. Dr. Stewart Altman, a colleague at Gulf South, remembers Cleggett as a ‘competent and personable’ physician who spoke often about her kids.”

She opened up a new office in a seedy area with a high crime rate. She got a certificate from the American Academy of Pain Medicine, hired police officers to guard the building, and started advertising as a pain management specialist.

Jacqueline Cleggett Dan Schneider

Dan Schneider was a Louisiana pharmacist who started to become suspicious after prescriptions signed off on by Jacqueline Cleggett began coming into his pharmacy. The patients were often young with no sign of chronic illness or pain, and rarely were prescribed any dosage under 40 mg. She almost never sent in prescriptions for antibiotics or other pain medication. Dan began investigating her as he had seen what addiction can do as his son was an addict.

Soon after Dan discovered that Cleggett was operating a supremely shady business: she ran her office at late hours, often until 2 a.m. in the morning. Payments were always done in cash and people came from other states to seek prescriptions from her — people who didn’t need OxyCotin, let alone the high dosages she willingly provided — for a fee.

According to NOLA.com between 2000 and 2001, she prescribed thousands of bottles of OxyContin, netting in at least half a million dollars.

Jacqueline Cleggett OxyContin

In 2002 Cleggett’s medical license was revoked after Schneider got the attention of the medical board and the authorities began an investigation on her.

The authorities uncovered that she was also selling to a group of people who then sold OxyContin throughout Mississippi. Seventeen of those people were arrested and sent to prison for selling the drugs given to them by Cleggett.

She was set to go to an evidentiary hearing in court to try to get her license back but she never showed up. She was admitted to the psychiatric ward at DePaul-Tulane Behavioral Health Center. She was suspected of abusing opioids herself at the time.

Jacqueline Cleggett Car Accident

In 2006 Jacqueline was involved in a car accident that gave her serious brain damage and left her partially paralyzed. The injuries from the car crash were so severe, a medical evaluator at the time said there was “almost no chance” she could practice medicine again.

In an interview in “The Pharmacist” she said; “I had a hangman’s fracture, which is what happens when you hang from a noose and break your neck. I had two brain hemorrhages, five skull fractures. The reason why I sound different is because I was intubated for six weeks. My voice is now higher and squeakier. Following the accident I was prescribed OxyContin. And, no, I didn’t have any problems with it. Actually it helped alleviate a lot of pain.”

Jacqueline Cleggett Arrest and Charges

In 2007 Cleggett was charged with illegally distributing OxyContin, Vicodin, methadone and other drugs between June 2000 and February 2002. The local outlet reported at the time that she faced up to 20 years in jail and a $1 million fine.

At the time she was living in an assisted living facility and because of her “extraordinary physical impairment” was unable to participate in her own defense. In July 2009 she pled guilty to one count of conspiring to dispense and distribute controlled substances and was sentenced to three months probation.

Jacqueline Cleggett Now

According to public records, Cleggett currently lives in an apartment in East Baton Rouge.

Jacqueline Cleggett The Pharmacist

“The Pharmacist” is a Netflix four-part true crime docu-series. The show focuses on a Louisiana pharmacist named Dan Schneider, who’s spurred into action after his 22-year-old son, Danny Jr. was shot to death while buying crack in April 14, 1999. He began his investigation after the police failed to investigate the case seriously enough. In 2001 he gave the police information that led to an arrest of his son’s killer. He began a quest to find those responsible for the opioid crisis and led to the take-down of notorious pill mill doctor Jacqueline Cleggett.