Man pleads guilty to selling drugs that led to Chardon Twp. man’s OD

A Cleveland man accused of selling a Chardon Township man a fatal combination of fentanyl and heroin pleaded guilty Feb. 7 to a reckless homicide charge.

Ronnell Smith, 25, was indicted by a Geauga County grand jury last year for the Nov. 26, 2016, death of Brandon Sherman, who was found dead in a Kirtland Road home.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the cause of death was acute intoxication by the combined effects of fentanyl and heroin.

After an investigation by Geauga County Sheriff’s Office deputies that included undercover drug buys, it was determined that the drugs had been bought from Smith, Geauga County Prosecutor James Flaiz previously told the News-Herald.

Smith was indicted on charges of first-degree felony manslaughter, seconddegree felony corrupting another with drugs, fourthdegree felony aggravated trafficking in drugs and fifth-degree felony trafficking in drugs.

He appeared before Geauga County Common Pleas Court Judge David M. Ondrey Feb. 7 to plead guilty to third-degree felony reckless homicide, amended from the involuntary manslaughter charge.

Smith faces a maximum of three years in prison. He is currently in prison on drug trafficking, possession of drugs and firearms in a motor vehicle charges stemming from a Cuyahoga County case.

His current prison term runs through July 15 of this year, according to records from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction.

In the midst of the opioid epidemic, some prosecutors offices began seeking manslaughter charges (and in some states that allow it, homicide charges) against drug dealers in an effort to crack down and deter trafficking.

“If the dealers want to peddle this poison, they should deal with the consequences as well,” Lake County Common Pleas Court Judge Vincent A. Culotta said in 2014. “We should hold them responsible, because nothing else seems to be working.”

Geauga County began pursuing manslaughter charges against traffickers in 2014.

“They can be difficult cases to prove because you need evidence that the death was caused by the heroin and you need to prove that the heroin that specifically caused the death was sold or administered by the defendant,’ Flaiz told the News-Herald that year. “If that evidence exists, I will present the case to the grand jury and seek a manslaughter indictment.”

In another recent Geauga County case involving an involuntary manslaughter charge stemming from a fatal drug overdose, the defendant Savonn Primm took his case to trial.

In November 2018, the jury found Primm, a Cleveland resident, guilty of aggravated trafficking of drugs and heroin trafficking. He was found not guilty of two involuntary manslaughter charges as well as a corrupting another with drugs charge. The 24-yearold Primm is currently serving a three-year prison sentenced according to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Correction records.

The practice of seeking manslaughter (and harsher) penalties against traffickers has been opposed by groups like the pro-reform Drug Policy Alliance.

The group in a 2016 report called the practice counterproductive.

“Prosecutors and legislators who champion renewed drug-induced homicide enforcement couch the use of this punitive measure, either naively or disingenuously, as necessary to curb increasing rates of drug overdose deaths,” the report stated.

“But there is not a shred of evidence that these laws are effective at reducing overdose fatalities,” it continued. “In fact, death tolls continue to climb across the country, even in the states and counties most aggressively prosecuting drug-induced homicide cases. As just one example, despite ten full-time police officers investigating 53 potential drug-induced homicide cases in Hamilton County, Ohio in 2015, the county still recorded 100 more opioid-related overdose deaths in 2016 than in 2015.”

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