Wichita ? Siobhan Reynolds has spent years crusading on behalf of chronic pain patients — testifying before Congress, suing government drug regulators and speaking out against what she believes is a government crackdown on prescription painkillers that has left many patients needlessly suffering.

But as the case of a Kansas physician linked to 68 overdose deaths wraps up in a federal courtroom here, the fiery patient advocate has found herself in an uncomfortable new role: fighting a secret federal investigation targeting her over a possible conspiracy to obstruct justice for her involvement in that case.

Reynolds, the president of the Pain Relief Network, championed the defense of Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife, Linda. The Haysville couple were convicted of unlawfully writing prescriptions leading to death, health care fraud and money laundering. Federal prosecutors want the couple, who face up to life in prison, to forfeit $4.2 million plus real estate and other assets.

‘Beaten up’

Reynolds has become a leading voice for pain-relief advocates after the 2003 arrest of Dr. William Hurwitz, whose pain management clinic in a suburb of Washington, D.C. once treated Reynolds’ late husband, Sean Greenwood. He suffered from a painful connective tissue disorder that has been inherited by the couple’s son. After Hurwitz’s arrest, the family struggled to find another physician willing to prescribe for Greenwood high doses of painkillers. He died in 2006.

Her initial refusal to turn over e-mails and other subpoenaed documents related to the Kansas case has already led to a contempt citation and cost Reynolds and her nonprofit group $36,500 in fines before the money ran out. Faced with imminent jailing for contempt, Reynolds relented and turned over some 4,000 pages of subpoenaed material three weeks before the Schneiders’ trial.

“I am being beaten up in the dark by the government,” Reynolds said. “They have taken everything I have. They have coerced me into violating all kinds of oaths I had held firm. But when push came to shove at the very end here, I decided I would be more valuable to the Schneiders and this country out than in.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway declined to discuss the grand jury investigation, which has been vaguely referenced numerous times in public documents filed in the Schneider case. The doctor’s defense has argued in filings prosecutors have used the separate grand jury proceedings to improperly get defense work product in the Schneider case.

The government tried unsuccessfully in 2008 to get the judge overseeing the Schneider case to issue a gag order against Reynolds. In court documents, the government has portrayed Reynolds as having a “sycophantic or parasitic relationship” with the couple and claimed she is using the Schneiders to further PRN’s political agenda and her personal interests.

‘I love people very much’

After the Schneiders’ arrest in 2007, Reynolds rallied his patients with petitions and demonstrations in a losing fight to keep the clinic open. The 49-year-old Santa Fe, N.M., woman helped the family line up attorneys experienced in physician prosecutions and provided the defense team with experts and information gleaned from her nine years of advocacy work.

To the chagrin of prosecutors, Reynolds also put up a highway billboard last year proclaiming: “Dr. Schneider never killed anyone.” Weeks after it went up, she got a subpoena seeking in part documents related to the sign.

“I put the billboard up to try to reawaken Wichita to the possibility that Dr. Schneider was entirely innocent — and I really thought it was within my First Amendment rights to do that,” Reynolds said.

Prosecutors alleged in a 2008 court document that after the Schneider clinic was closed Reynolds told a distraught pain patient that, if she was going to commit suicide because painkillers were no longer available, to “make it count” by doing it publicly.

Reynolds said many patients have told her they wanted to commit suicide and begged her to help them so it wouldn’t happen. She said that is why she tried to keep the Schneiders’ clinic open.

“PRN worked so hard, spent so much money to prevent that kind of thing,” Reynolds said. “Might I have said in a dark moment something like ‘well, make it count,’ I think I did, but the truth of the matter is I love people very much and I have spent every dime I ever had in my entire life to fight for their cause.”