Anna Nicole Smith companion, doctors to stand trial

Anna Nicole Smith's former boyfriend and two physicians were ordered to stand trial on Friday on charges of illegally supplying the late model with powerful drugs.

After a two-week preliminary hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Perry ruled there was enough evidence to require Howard K. Stern and doctors Khristine Eroshevich and Sandeep Kapoor to stand trial.

All three are accused of funneling prescription drugs to an addict. Former Playboy centerfold Smith, 39, died from an accidental drug overdose in a Florida hotel room on February 8, 2007.

"I do find the proof is sufficient to bind them over for trial," Perry said, cautioning however that only a "very minimal" standard of evidence was required for a trial to proceed.

Stern, 40, is charged with 11 felony counts, including prescribing, administering or dispensing a controlled substance to an addict, obtaining a prescription for opiates by deceit, fraud or misrepresentation and conspiracy to commit a crime.

Eroshevich, 61, and Kapoor, 41, each face six felony counts, including unlawfully prescribing a controlled substance, prescribing, administering or dispensing a controlled substance to an addict.

All three accused -- who have strenuously denied the allegations -- are due back in court on December 11 for arraignment.

A 2007 autopsy found that Smith's death -- a worldwide media sensation at the time -- was due to a lethal cocktail of anti-anxiety medication, methadone, antibiotics and other prescription drugs.

It came just months after her son, 20-year-old Daniel, died from an overdose in the Bahamas in September 2006.

Born Vickie Lynn Marshall, Smith in 1994 married Texas billionaire oil tycoon Howard Marshall, who she had met earlier while working at a strip club. She was 26 at the time and he was 89.

Marshall died in 1995 after a 14-month marriage. But his adult son E. Pierce Marshall contested Smith's claim to the billionaire's inheritance in a case that reached the US Supreme Court.