Wichita ? The government is seeking to revoke the court-appointed counsel for an indicted Kansas doctor and his wife accused of illegally prescribing drugs that led to at least four deaths.

In court documents filed Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway claimed the couple have $691,000 in available assets that could be used to pay for their own defense. She also asked the judge to require the couple to reimburse to the treasury for costs already incurred by their public defenders.

Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife, nurse Linda Schneider, face a 34-count federal indictment charging them with conspiracy, unlawful distribution of a controlled substance, health care fraud, illegal monetary transactions and money laundering. They have pleaded not guilty.

The Schneiders are not charged with killing any patients. But federal prosecutors have linked them to the overdose deaths of 56 patients who obtained painkillers at the clinic. The indictment alleges they are directly responsible for four of those deaths.

Heated dispute

Friday’s move by the government is the latest in an increasingly bitter and public fight between federal prosecutors and a prominent Haysville physician and his wife who have vehemently proclaimed their innocence.

“These kinds of tactics ultimately work against the government. It is just nice that we finally have in the open the lengths the government will go to try to convict innocent people,” said Sioban Reynolds, president of the Pain Relief Network, a New Mexico-based patients rights group that has come to the defense of the Schneiders.

She said the Schneiders have other avenues, such as civil claims, that they can pursue outside of criminal court. Asked how they could afford their civil lawsuit if they can’t pay for their criminal defense, she replied her group has lawyers willing to work for expenses.

“They are sick and tired of watching this going on. Guantanamo woke people up to the nature of this Justice Department,” Reynolds said. “But people are deluding themselves to think it is just happening to foreigners offshore. The truth of the matter is it is happening all across America – and it most certainly is happening to the Schneiders in Kansas.”

Asset disagreement

At their first court appearance, the Schneiders told a magistrate judge that they did not know whether they had enough money for an attorney because they did not know what assets the government had seized.

“Our motion sets forth our belief that the Schneiders have the money to pay for their own attorney – and a judge will decide after seeing their responses whether that claim has merit or not,” said Jim Cross, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Pat Hatcher, the sister of Linda Schneider, said Friday that some of the assets that prosecutors claim are available don’t belong to the Schneiders. For example, a house in Mexico that the government listed as worth $200,000 is actually leased because U.S. citizens cannot legally own Mexican real estate, she said.

Hatcher said the government could still seize some of the other assets, making it hard to find private attorneys willing to take the risk of not getting paid.

“If it went through trial and the government won the case, they could go back to the lawyer and take it away from them,” Hatcher said.

She also claimed that prosecutors have seized assets belonging to her 80-year-old father that would transfer to Linda Schneider only in the event of his death. On Wednesday, government agents demanded that her father hand over the deeds to real estate property he solely owned, she said.

Hatcher also said money was transferred without her father’s consent from a credit union account he held in his name that listed Linda Schneider as a beneficiary in the event of his death to an account he jointly owned with Linda Schneider so prosecutors could seize it.

“It is still my dad’s property, still his bank account,” Hatcher said. “I feel this is just another way to try to keep us from having money … to tie up his assets.”

But Cross said defense attorneys should be paid for by the defendants and not the government.

“Forfeiture and seizure of assets are governed by law and if the defendants in this case feel assets are being seized that shouldn’t be they need to take that to court where a judge can determine what can or cannot be taken from them,” Cross said.

In their filing, prosecutors pointed out that the couple is accused of money laundering using “convoluted financial transactions.” They said the Schneiders may have hidden other assets that investigators don’t know about.