Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
State now treats drug dealers as killers
Law going after those selling deadly fentanyl
More drug dealers are facing murder charges for selling the powerful opiod fentanyl to people who wound up overdosing.
Prosecutors contend the dealers not only stuffed their pockets from selling the usually lethal and cheap synthetic pills, but intentionally killed buyers at the same time.
“Florida law holds responsible those who supply and sell the drugs which lead to a death,” said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, whose office is prosecuting three such cases.
Responding to the fentanyl and opioid epidemic, lawmakers 18 months ago made fentanyl a murder weapon much the same as a gun or a knife, joining cocaine, heroin and other dangerous narcotics.
While many overdoses are still deemed accidental, South Florida prosecutors in recent months obtained grand jury indictments for first-degree murder charges against a half-dozen individuals.
The first trial in the area to test the revised state law is set for early December.
These criminal cases are expected to multiply, and perhaps bring a measure of comfort for the families who lost loved ones.
The parents and siblings of Thomas Matuseski, a Boynton Beach man who died at age 36 on Jan. 28, 2018, now have a chance to obtain justice for their son and
brother.
Last October, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said accused dealer Calvin Warren Jr., 36, is responsible for Matuseski’s death.
Warren became the first person in South Florida to be indicted for first-degree murder after the law changed.
According to Matuseski’s published obituary, he once had a promising future, beginning as a New York State star high school baseball player who later earned a business degree from Methodist College in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and fathered a child.
One of Matuseski’s roommates in Boynton Beach told police last year that he was a recovering heroin addict who seemed to be acting differently in the week before his death, records show. The family declined an interview request.
Court records do not detail how Matuseski and Warren interacted. But investigators noted that they obtained Matuseski’s cellphone records and they found in his pocket a syringe cap with residue that tested positive for heroin.
Warren’s indictment and a news release indicate the heroin was mixed with fentanyl, a man-made painkiller that can be up to 50 times more potent than heroin alone. It’s so deadly that just two milligrams — comparable to four grains of salt — is enough to kill, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Aronberg, who has crusaded against opioid deaths, said his office “will aggressively charge drug dealers who spread deadly fentanyl-laced heroin into our community.”
Most fentanyl comes from laboratories in China and is often smuggled into the U.S. by Mexican cartels and delivered through the mail, said the county’s chief prosecutor.
“Drug dealers have a financial incentive to spike heroin with fentanyl or its derivatives like carfentanil, as they provide a much greater high than heroin at a fraction of the price,” Aronberg explained in a newspaper column last year. “The end user has no way of visually identifying which batch of heroin has been laced with these synthetic opioids.”
Death cases under review
Since Warren’s arrest, a Palm Beach County grand jury returned murder indictments in two more fentanyl death cases.
In February, Vicki Sakers, 41, was charged in the death of a purported friend, Candace Moreland, 37, who died from an overdose on Dec. 16, 2017, at Sakers’ residence west of Lantana. The sheriff’s office said Sakers bought three pills from an unnamed heroin dealer and gave one to Moreland, who stopped breathing within hours.
In April, alleged dealer Deon McCorvey, 23, was charged in the June 28, 2018, death of William Woody, 28, near West Palm Beach. The indictment said McCorvey provided the fentanyl that killed Woody.
There have been no similar cases yet in Broward County, said Paula McMahon, spokeswoman for the State Attorney’s Office.
“Our office has reviewed several cases that did not meet the burden of proof,” she said. “Our homicide prosecutors are currently reviewing two cases that are still under investigation but no charging decisions have been made on those cases.”
Last November, MiamiDade prosecutors announced a first-degree murder indictment for Nathaniel Vargas, 37, in the fentanyl death of a fellow inmate at the county jail. The prosecution is seeking the death penalty for Vargas, who allegedly smuggled the drug into the lock-up, records show.
In February, MiamiDade prosecutors obtained two more first-degree murder indictments. Alleged drug dealers Karl Schmidt, 21, and David Cash, 52, were charged in the fentanyl-related December death of 22-year-old Daniel Calle.
“The opioid epidemic has already taken far too many lives and devastated far too many families,” State Attorney Fernandez Rundle said while announcing those arrests.
Across the state, fentanyl caused 1,743 deaths in 2017, according to the Florida Medical Examiner’s Commission’s report from last November. That’s an increase from 1,390 deaths in 2016, and 705 deaths in 2015. Only cocaine caused more people to die.
Palm Beach County had the second-highest number of Florida’s fentanyl overdoses in the state in 2017, with 244 deaths. The Jacksonville area was first with 302 deaths.
During the same period, 223 people in Broward and 169 in MiamiDade died from fentanyl overdoses, according to the report.
Fentanyl-related deaths are on the rise across the country, too. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reported 47,600 overdoses from opioids in 2017, with fentanyl up to 60 percent of that total.
The steady increase of overdoses in recent decades prompted law enforcement agencies to begin treating some overdoses as homicides rather than the traditional view that these deaths were accidents.
About 20 states now have so-called “drug-induced homicide laws.” The National Association of Attorneys General says more prosecutors should consider going after dealers, even if the cases may be hard to prove.
“These homicides may not be easily discovered, investigated, prosecuted or proven, but they still deserve attention,” states an article on the association’s website.
Acknowledging one of the biggest criticisms of such laws, it adds, “Prosecuting overdose deaths as homicides will not be the silver bullet to the public health crisis this nation faces.”
Will laws help prevent deaths?
It remains to be seen whether the expanded law in Florida and those in other states will deter illicit drug sales or reduce the number of fatalities.
One advocacy group, the New York City-based Drug Policy Alliance, concluded in a 2017 report that “druginduced homicide laws serve no purpose” and take public funds away from treatment programs.
The alliance, with a mission of ending America’s decades-old war on drugs, says, “There is not a shred of evidence that these laws are effective at reducing overdose fatalities. In fact, death tolls continue to climb across the country, even in the states and counties most aggressively prosecuting drug-induced homicide cases.”
But the statistics are not deterring the filing of murder cases across Florida and the nation. And it’s not just drug dealers who are being held accountable.
Earlier this month in Ohio, prosecutors in Columbus charged a doctor with 25 counts of murder in the deaths of 25 patients over four years. The physician is accused of prescribing fatal doses of fentanyl to critical care patients.
Drug dealers, though, remain the chief target.
Robert Wesley, public defender for Orange and Osceola counties, is on the record opposing the fentanyl murder law for a different reason: He doesn’t believe it is fair to prosecute drug dealers as killers for the deaths of willing users.
After fentanyl was added to the murder law, Wesley told the Orlando Sentinel, “It’s almost like taking a ride on a motorcycle at 100 miles an hour and then bad stuff happens and you weren’t wearing a helmet.”