Once called a great surgeon, Dr. Phillip Leon Mallory II can now be called a criminal.
Mallory, 53, pleaded guilty in federal court to lying in an attempt to purchase a rifle while he was out on bond on drug charges in Arapahoe County.
He pleaded to the charge in exchange for the dismissal of a second federal charge and the 10 felonies in Arapahoe County that made it illegal for him to possess a firearm.
The state charges stem from allegations that he traded prescription drugs for sex from strippers at Shotgun Willie’s.
While he was out on bail for those charges, prosecutors said, he violated the terms of his bond by repeatedly trying to buy an assault rifle, resulting in the federal charges.
As police and medical regulators closed in on Mallory, he tried to get a surgical job with the military that would have him operating on soldiers in Iraq, according to testimony in a federal-court hearing in October.
He didn’t tell the military that he had lost his license to prescribe drugs and was prohibited from treating patients in Colorado.
To that Mallory said at the time, “There was no need to divulge that information.” He described the prescribing of drugs as a “minute, trivial aspect” of being a surgeon.
His attorney, Harvey Steinberg, had said any assertion that Mallory was attempting to flee from prosecution by trying to join the military was “completely ridiculous.”
As a surgeon, Mallory was hailed for operating on a victim of the Columbine shootings in 1999 and later for his surgical skill in removing a 2-by-4 board that had impaled a teenage boy.
He was arrested in March 2005 on the drugs-for-sex charges – eight alleging distribution of controlled drugs and two alleging criminal impersonation to gain a profit.
When authorities raided a hotel room he kept, they confiscated a laptop computer with “several thousand images of various women in varying stages of dress and that many were of Dr. Mallory having sex with these women,” according to an affidavit filed by an Arapahoe County sheriff’s deputy.
The charges Mallory faced in Arapahoe County were dismissed Monday “as part of a disposition or plea agreement in his federal case,” said Kathleen Walsh, spokeswoman for the district court in Arapahoe County.
Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. attorney, said Mallory is to be sentenced Aug. 22.
While prosecutors and the defense have agreed that 10-16 months is an appropriate sentence under federal guidelines, the judge isn’t bound by those guidelines. The maximum sentence for the crime is 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Staff writer Jim Kirksey can be reached at 303-820-1448 or jkirksey@denverpost.com.
