N.J. man convicted in fatal overdose
Jamal Thompson, 24, admits to knowingly selling fentanyl-laced narcotics to town of Rochester man
A drug dealer from New Jersey admitted Friday to knowingly selling the deadly fentanyl-laced narcotics that killed a town of Rochester man early last year, and now faces 3½ to 15 years in prison, the Ulster County District Attorney’s Office said Saturday.
Jamal Thompson, 24, of Butler, N.J., pleaded guilty Friday, March 19, during a virtual court proceeding before Ulster County Judge Bryan E. Rounds to manslaughter, a felony, authorities said. Thompson admitted to selling drugs to the 35-yearold Rochester man on Jan. 9, 2020, in Paterson, N.J., and to knowing the drugs contained fentanyl and that his actions recklessly caused the overdose death of the Ulster County resident.
Prosecutors have not identified the man whose death led to the charge against Thompson.
This is the first manslaughter conviction resulting from an overdose death in Ulster County. Reached by phone Saturday, Ulster County District Attorney David Clegg called fentanyl “a new horrible poison that’s in these drugs” and said using them is “playing Russian roulette.”
Clegg said he hopes Thompson’s conviction sends a message.
“Anybody who’s dealing this stuff: You’re killing people and that’s what this is about,” the district attorney said.
In August 2020, a county grand jury indicted Thompson on charges
of criminal sale of a controlled substance, manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. The charges stemmed from an investigation into the overdose death and was conducted by the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office and the Ulster Regional Gang Enforcement Narcotics Team (URGENT), with the assistance of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency office in Paterson, N.J., the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office, the New Jersey State Police and the Hudson Valley Office of Homeland Security Investigations.
Thompson was taken into custody at his New Jersey home on Aug. 25, 2020, by U.S. marshals from the N.Y./N.J. Regional Fugitive Task Force, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the Passaic County Sheriff’s Office and Ulster County sheriff’s deputies.
In a prepared statement on Saturday, Clegg said that “fentanyl is the poison that is causing most of the overdose deaths in Ulster County. Drug traffickers who are peddling this extremely dangerous and deadly drug will be held accountable not only for the illegal sale of drugs, but for the deaths they cause whenever possible.”
In September 2020, after Thompson’s indictment, Clegg said “the dealing of poisonous drugs, including fentanyl, will not be tolerated” in Ulster County, and called Thompson’s arrest “a cutting-edge attempt to hold people accountable.”
Clegg said manslaughter charges are rare in drugrelated deaths and that, to his knowledge, the only other places in New York state where such charges had been brought were Broome and Monroe counties, and “maybe New York City.”
As opposed to criminally negligent homicide, Clegg said, a manslaughter charge in a drug case requires prosecutors to “show proof of knowledge that a particular batch” of narcotics was deadly.
Thompson is being held at the Ulster County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bail.
This case was prosecuted by assistant district attorney Timothy Lawson. Thompson was represented by Assistant Public Defender Russell Schindler.
Twice before — once in the summer of 2019 and in June 2020 — suspects have been charged with criminally negligent homicide for drug-related deaths in Ulster County. The status of those cases was not immediately available.
Criminally negligent homicide carries a term of one to four years.
The announcement of Thompson’s arrest in September came a day after law-enforcement officials announced the largest-ever drug haul in Ulster County’s history — the seizure of more than 10,000 bags of heroin and fentanyl following the arrest of Timothy L. Schleede, 29, of Kingston — and two days after Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan declared a public health emergency due to a spike in fentanyl-related deaths in the county.
Schleede is accused of selling heroin and fentanyl at hotels and motels in the town of Ulster. The status of Schleede’s case was also not immediately available.
In September, Ryan said opioid-related deaths in Ulster County between January and July 2020 were 171 percent higher than during the same period in 2019.