You’re Not a Drug Dealer? Here’s Why the Police Might Disagree

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/us/overdoses-murder-crime-police.html

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People who thought they were just partying when someone else overdosed can find themselves charged with murder.

By Rosa Goldensohn

We spent the past few months looking at fatal overdoses that led to homicide charges against victims’ friends, girlfriends and boyfriends, and even siblings, parents and children — even though the deaths were unintentional.

[Read the full story on overdose prosecutions.]

We found hundreds of overdose homicide cases in 36 states, and there are likely many more. About one in four of those charged in Pennsylvania, where we took a close look at the data, was under 25 years old.

Here are some things those defendants probably wish they had known:

Legally speaking, it can be. If you supplied the drugs or helped obtain them, you could be considered a drug dealer, held responsible for the death and go to prison.

Let’s say you bring illegal drugs to a party, as this 21-year-old in Minnesota did, and something terrible happens, like 10 people falling ill and one — his best friend — dying. He was convicted of third-degree murder and sentenced to nearly 10 years.

Even if you’re mistaken about what exactly you’ve given someone, you can get in serious trouble, like this 17-year-old. He and two classmates faced murder charges when he sold a drug he thought was LSD to his closest friend, who overdosed. His defense lawyer argued that he was the captain of the football team, a straight-A student, and this was the “sole time” he had been involved with drugs, but the prosecutor said the evidence, including text messages, was “damning.” The three were allowed to plead guilty to distribution, a less serious charge, but still a felony.

Unlike child endangerment or “social host” laws that hold parents responsible for underage drinking or drug use, these cases can make you criminally liable for the actions of your peers or people older than you.

State laws vary, but drug “distribution” or “delivery” is generally not limited to selling. It can include sharing drugs, giving them away, or having a friend pay you back for drugs you bought.

It depends on the circumstances. Our article takes a close look at Nick Klamer and Chase Thistle, two friends in rural, blue-collar Wisconsin. Nick asked his dad if he could borrow $200, claiming it was needed for an emergency car repair, but the two friends used the money to buy drugs. Nick, 26, died and Chase, now 29, was prosecuted.

Chase may not have touched the money, but he used Facebook Messenger to arrange the deal, making him a “party to a crime,” which legally speaking is the same as actually committing the crime. He is serving three years for reckless homicide.

Prosecutors often see overdoses from the point of view of the victims’ families, some of whom say that even if no one meant for anyone to die, without the drugs their loved ones would still be alive.

“Some family has lost an innocent life,” said Peter Kilmartin, the attorney general of Rhode Island, who proposed a mandatory life sentence in drug homicide cases. “That victim no longer has a voice.”

Providing or helping someone get a drug illegally puts you on shaky ground for everything that happens later. Legally, there is a difference between that and, say, a store selling alcohol to a 21-year-old who drank too much and died, because the sale itself was not unlawful.

Of course you should call for help when someone is in distress. There are Good Samaritan laws in many states that protect you from charges like drug possession in those circumstances. But if you were involved in procuring the drugs, you would probably not be protected from being charged with manslaughter, reckless homicide or murder. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, the only states that provide that kind of immunity are Vermont and Delaware.

In several cases we looked at, the person who ended up being charged had tried to save the overdosing person by calling 911, administering C.P.R. or giving naloxone, an overdose-reversing drug. Critics say that prosecuting those people will make others afraid to call for help.

It’s an important question, and one we don’t have an answer to yet.

There is no grand spreadsheet that shows the race of people arrested in drug homicides. We got some statistics from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing that showed that while most of those convicted were white, the black defendants were more likely to get tougher sentences. The sample pool — 29 defendants — was too small to draw conclusions, and without a much deeper dive into each case, we could not explain the “why” behind the outcomes.

For our article, we chose to focus on cases where the people involved had a relationship other than dealer and buyer. But in our research, we were also curious about stories like the one in which a black 18-year-old was charged with murder, accused of selling heroin to a 39-year-old white man. An analysis of news reports by the Health in Justice Action Lab at Northeastern University found that while most defendants were white, in cases where the person charged was a dealer, roughly half the defendants were black or Hispanic.

Because the number of these cases is on the rise, examining racial disparity would be a good avenue for future reporting.

Twenty states have made drug delivery resulting in death a crime, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, which has a map here and a report that lists the statutes, starting on Page 56. Other states charge overdose deaths under regular manslaughter, homicide and murder statutes, making them more difficult to count.

This article was produced in consultation with Oluwafemi Ajala, Noel Anaya, Finley Davis, and Desmond Meagley from Youth Radio.