Believing a Tallulah physician accused of more than 70 counts of prescription drug forgery was feigning illness to stall his trial this week, prosecutors gained access to his medical records Tuesday.

District Attorney Ricky Smith requested access to the records of Dr. Lawrence Francis Chenier III Tuesday afternoon, and Circuit Judge M. James Chaney granted the request.

Chenier checked himself into a Jackson hospital late last week suffering from chest pain, his defense attorney Marshall Sanders said.

Chenier did not suffer a heart attack, Sanders said, but instead was suffering from the effects of a diabetic condition.

“If he has to undergo the stress of a trial, he might go into cardiac arrest,” Sanders said.

Smith said he felt that Chenier’s hospital stay was merely a tactic to delay the trial, but Sanders insisted Chenier is sick.

“This case has been hanging over Dr. Chenier’s head for the last three years,” Sanders said. “He wants it over.”

Chenier’s personal physician in Jackson has said Chenier would need two to six weeks to recover, Sanders said.

The physician is expected to testify on Chenier’s medical condition at a hearing in circuit court Friday.

Chenier was set to stand trial for 74 counts of prescription forgery and a single count of conspiracy. He is accused of writing prescriptions to feed the addiction of his live-in girlfriend Pattie Carr. She pleaded guilty to five counts of prescription forgery, but Chaney has not yet issued a sentence.

Carr picked up prescriptions for 13,000 painkillers between Oct. 10, 2010, and Sept. 27, 2011, according to the indictment against her.

All the pills were picked up at a local drugstore. The prescriptions included the names of 21 fictitious people, Smith said.

“As Pattie Carr said on the witness stand, the majority of names are names that she made up,” Smith said.

Defense attorney Lisa Ross has argued that the drugstore should not have given Carr that quantity of drugs in less than a year’s time.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Sanders sought to have the number of charges against Chenier reduced into smaller segments, but the judge denied the request.

The state has done its best to reduce the number of charges to a manageable amount, Smith said.

“The defendant was actually arrested on over 300 counts, but the state has reduced that to 74 counts of prescription forgery,” Smith said.

The sheer number of counts is prejudicial against Chenier, Sanders argued.

“It doesn’t take 70-something counts to make the point the state wants to make,” Sanders said.

Because the state plans to call the same witnesses to prove all the counts in the indictment, “it makes sense to the court that all those be tied together,” Chaney said in his ruling.