Fentanyl kills young kids; parents facing charges
Prosecutors bringing infant overdoses to court as murder cases
Madison Bernard climbed into bed before dawn with her toddler, Charlotte, who was asleep next to a nightstand strewn with straws, burned tinfoil and a white powder.
Hours later, the mother woke and found her daughter struggling to breathe, according to investigators who described the scene in court documents.
After being rushed in an ambulance to a hospital, the 15-month-old girl died from a fentanyl overdose. Her mother and father, whom authorities said brought the drugs into their California home, were charged with murder and are awaiting trial.
The couple has pleaded not guilty but are part of a growing number of parents across the U.S. being charged amid an escalating opioid crisis that has claimed an increasing number of children as collateral victims.
Some 20 states have so-called “drug-induced homicide” laws, which allow prosecutors to press murder or manslaughter charges against anyone who supplies or exposes a person to drugs causing a fatal overdose. The laws are intended to target drug dealers.
In California, where the Legislature has failed to pass such laws, prosecutors in at least three counties are turning to drunk driving laws to charge parents whose children die from fentanyl overdose. It’s a unique approach that will soon be tested in court as the cases head to trial.
Supporters of the ramped-up enforcement say that by now those who use the synthetic opioid know the lethality of the drug and, like drunk drivers, they should know the consequences of exposing their children to their actions.
Critics say the parents didn’t intend to kill their children but instead made poor choices because of their addictions and are being further punished instead of being offered help.
The debate comes as the country battles with how to effectively diminish the use of the highly accessible and extremely deadly drug.
Authorities believe some of the children died after touching something with the powdery substance and then touching their eyes or mouth. In one case, the drug may have been on the hands of a parent who prepared the baby’s bottle. The drug is not absorbed into the skin but experts say it can be lethal if as little as 2 milligrams, about the weight of a mosquito, enters the body. “These are tragic cases because drug addiction has destroyed a precious life and the parents face the consequences of their reckless actions,” said Charlie Smith, the top prosecutor in Frederick County, Maryland, and president of the National District Attorneys Association.
Parents also can face charges if young children become seriously ill or die from crack, heroin and cocaine, but such cases are rare because a sizeable amount must be ingested, Smith said.
“This is really a first in the history of our country because we have a drug on the streets that can potentially kill you instantly with a minor amount of product,” Smith said.
Prosecutors have a difficult decision to make when determining whether to charge parents, but Smith said the goal is to deter others from doing the same.
He prosecuted a case in which parents in Maryland were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the 2020 death of their 2-month-old son. The Mount Airy couple had mixed fentanyl in the same bathroom where they prepared bottles for their infant.
Jeremy Whitney Frazier and Heather Marie Frazier were each sentenced in December to five years in prison and five years of supervised probation.
The National District Attorneys Association doesn’t track how many parents have been charged for exposing their children to fentanyl, but news reports and interviews with prosecutors show such cases have been on the rise since the onset of the pandemic.
Last month, a Maine woman pleaded guilty to manslaughter after her 14-month-old son’s fentanyl overdose. Investigators found fentanyl on a blanket and sheet where Ashley Malloy’s son Karson had been sleeping.
States such as Maryland that don’t have “drug-induced homicide” laws often charge parents with manslaughter, Smith said.
In California, prosecutors have turned to a drunk driving law. Prosecutors say the parents, like drunk drivers, knew fentanyl can injure or kill people.