Jeffrey Harris: Manhattan doctor receives 15-year sentence for poisoning wife Tammy with herbal remedy

Warning: This article contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some, readers’ discretion advised.

MANHATTAN, NEW YORK: On Friday, a Manhattan judge threw the book at a physician who had poisoned his wife to death with a herbal remedy mixture that had previously caused her to start "seeing frogs."

Justice Curtis Farber of the Manhattan Supreme Court handed down the maximum sentence of five to fifteen years in prison to Dr Jeffrey Harris of Vancouver, Washington, as per the New York Post.

The doctor appeared in court handcuffed and dressed in beige jail clothes.

Manhattan jury convicted Jeffrey Harris of manslaughter

A Manhattan jury found Harris, 59, guilty of manslaughter in October following a month-long trial during which the prosecution contended that Harris' obsession with the dietary supplement selenium caused his 55-year-old wife Tammy to overdose fatally in 2018.

Tammy's husband, an internal medicine specialist, refused to accept Tammy's lupus diagnosis from other medical professionals. Instead, he took charge of her treatment and gave her a variety of medications and supplements.

Harris was Tammy's doctor when they first got together in 2003, and they were married in 2007.

Her illness began in 2016 when she developed unexplained aches and pains. However, as a result of Harris' treatments, her health rapidly deteriorated; she eventually became bedridden, experienced severe jaundice, and lost a significant amount of weight.

Sarah Hopkins-Hubbard, Tammy's 41-year-old daughter from a previous marriage, testified in September that one night he had given her so much pain medication "that she started seeing frogs jumping on her walls in the bedroom."

What do prosecutors say?

Prosecutors claim that in the late summer of 2017, Harris began giving his wife high doses of selenium after he mistakenly believed she had mercury poisoning, despite multiple tests showing otherwise.

This ultimately led to her death. Tammy, who weighed less than 80 pounds, visited a doctor Harris admired in New York City in January 2018, according to the district attorney's office.

Tammy didn't have mercury poisoning, the Big Apple alternative medicine center confirmed through testing, and according to the prosecution, she had ten times the recommended amount of selenium in her blood.

After experiencing heart failure at the Palace Hotel on February 22, 2018, Tammy passed away at Lenox Hill Hospital six days later. The final verdict on her death was a homicide.

Manhattan District Attorney Bragg said in a statement on Friday that "Jeffrey Harris betrayed his duty as a physician and as a husband by ignoring all medical evidence and advice and experimenting on his wife, leading to her slow and painful death."

According to the DA, “Dr Harris prevented his wife, Tammy, from being treated for lupus, and instead filled her with unnecessary prescription medications and herbal supplements that exacerbated her symptoms and left her in excruciating pain.”

Jason Goldman, Harris' attorney, expressed his displeasure with the sentencing's result in the meantime.

“Many loved ones, friends, and colleagues of both Doctor Harris and his late-wife Tammy had urged the Court for leniency today,” Goldman said. “We are disappointed, to say the least.”