(AP)- A Martinsville doctor that received a 40 year prison sentence for prescribing over half a million highly addictive opioids will get a new trial. According to the Associated Press, Joel Smithers has been granted a new trial by a federal appeals court that found the instructions given to jurors at his trial misstated the law.

Smithers was originally sentenced in 2019 for more than 800 counts of illegally prescribing drugs. He was charged with having caused the death of a West Virginia woman from the oxycodone and oxymorphone he prescribed, maintaining a place for the purpose of illegally distributing controlled substances, possession with the intent to distribute controlled substances, and 859 counts of illegally prescribing Schedule II controlled substances.

The Drug Enforcement Agency said Smithers flooded Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee with opioids. His office lacked basic medical supplies, his receptionist lived out of a back room during the work week, and many patients slept outside and urinated in the parking lot. At trial, one woman who described herself as an addict, compared Smithers’ practice to pill mills she frequented in Florida where she received medication without any kind of physical exam or medical records.

Patients who came to the office would wait up to 12 hours to see Smithers, who regularly kept his office open past midnight. Smithers did not accept insurance and took in more than $700,000 in cash and credit card payments in two years.

According to the AP, a ruling issued Friday by a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Smithers’ convictions and ordered a new trial.

Jurors at Smithers’ trial were instructed that in order to find Smithers guilty of illegally prescribing drugs, they must find that he did so “without a legitimate medical purpose or beyond the bounds of medical practice.”

But the appeals court found that that jury instruction was improper, citing a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said a defendant must “knowingly or intentionally” act in an unauthorized manner to be guilty of that charge. Even though the jury convicted Smithers in 2019, his case was subject to the 2022 Supreme Court decision because his appeal was still pending when that ruling was issued.