Wichita ? A Kansas doctor linked to 68 patient deaths showed “incredible gall” by claiming after a 2005 raid of his clinic that he did not know of overdose problems, an emergency room physician testified Wednesday.

The testimony came in the second week of the trial of Dr. Stephen Schneider and his wife, Linda, on charges of unlawfully prescribing painkillers leading to deaths, health care fraud and money laundering.

Dr. Brian Katan told jurors he personally spoke to Schneider at least two times a year, and more likely 10 times, between 2002 and 2005 about overdose problems with his patients. He also testified about a conversation he had with Schneider just three days after the raid at his Haysville clinic in which the doctor claimed he was unaware of the problems.

“I expressed to him my total disbelief of any claim of ignorance on his part on these issues,” Katan wrote in a Sept. 16, 2005 e-mail sent to hospital staff about that conversation.

He testified Schneider had shown “incredible gall” in making that assertion. The e-mail also notes that in the days after the raid, Schneider sent all patients to the emergency room at that time for treatment because the clinic could not see them. Katan asked Schneider not to do that.

Katan said he would not have referred any pain patients to Schneider because it seemed his answer was to always give more and more pain medications rather than make any efforts at biofeedback, steroid injections or other treatment.

He also reviewed a government exhibit while on the stand detailing the nearly 100 overdoses and the deaths, calling it an “incredible number.”

Asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway what he would do if these had been his patients, Katan replied, “I would stop doing medicine and go live on an island.”

On cross examination, defense attorney Larry Williamson pointed out Katan had not claimed until trial that he had spoken to the doctor as many as 10 times annually about the overdoses, noting that higher number was not brought up in more than 30-pages of grand jury testimony.

The defense also tried to raise doubts about his motives by questioning why Katan did not write an e-mail documenting the conversation until after the raid on Schneider’s clinic, hinting the hospital may have been trying to avoid civil liability. Katan denied such a motive, and noted he had talked to the Kansas Board of Healing Arts previously about his concerns.

Also testifying Wednesday was the husband of one of the patients whose June 20, 2005 death is charged in the indictment. She had been to a hospital on at least one previous occasion for an overdose.

The man, identified in court only as Larry to protect the privacy of his dead wife, cried on the stand as he told jurors about the day she died.

“I tried to save her. I couldn’t do it,” he testified.

He acknowledged during cross-examination that he had once described his wife as a “woman full of pain” from a car accident that left her with back and knee injuries. He also acknowledged she had gotten prescriptions from several different doctors.

Another man identified only as Leo D. testified that he worried about the amount of drugs his wife received. He said he once found her “out of her mind” and sitting in her running car in the clinic parking lot.

“I became very irate,” he said. “I got her out of the car. I drug her into the clinic with me.”

He testified he left with his wife after not being allowed to see the doctor.

Jamie Clowers, a former pharmacist at a pharmacy near the clinic, testified that in the seven months she worked there it was typical for about 50 Schneider clinic patients to come in each day to fill prescriptions. Often, they came in groups, she said.

She testified she asked for a transfer because she believed most of them were abusing the drugs.

“I really had a hard time being a part of that — realizing these weren’t really legitimate prescriptions, in my mind, and seeing what it was doing to people,” Clowers said. “I did not want to be a part of that.”