OPINION Tale of two drug deaths, 2 court cases

Both cases fell under a new push by prosecutors seeking to stem a wave of heroin abuse washing over the region.

This is a tale of two drug cases.

Both ended in tragedy, fatal overdoses that took two young lives.

Both resulted in charges being filed against the person who supplied the drugs.

One case was brought by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Philadelphia. The other played out in Delaware County Court.

In 2014, Emma Semler scored some heroin in Philly and shared it with a friend, Jenny Werstler, in the bathroom of a KFC. Werstler quickly overdosed. Semler, along with her sister, panicked. They quickly cleaned up and left Werstler, who had struggled with addiction and was just out of rehab, to die on the bathroom floor. She died on her 20th birthday.

Likewise, Andy Bruhn had been in the throes of his own addiction issues.

The 28-year-old Chester man had injured his back at work. He got hooked on pain pills, which eventually led him to heroin.

That led him to Raheem Harper. The Colwyn man this week was sentenced for supplying a fatal dose of fentanyl to Bruhn.

Both Semler and Harper appeared contrite, even distraught at the consequences of their actions.

Semler was in tears as she openly wondered why she is alive and her friend Werstler is not.

She has gone through rehab, gotten herself clean, and started a new life working in the rehab field.

“I have extreme remorse,” she told a federal judge. “If I could go back and change anything, I would.”

Likewise, Harper told a Delaware County judge, “I don’t really know where I went wrong. I take full responsibility. It was a selfish decision. I just made the wrong decision. I didn’t think about it, about doing this harm to Mr. Bruhn’s family, to my family. I was just thinking about myself. I’m sorry for that.”

Both cases fell under a new push by prosecutors seeking to stem the wave of heroin abuse washing over the region by using a new charge, “drug delivery resulting in death.”

It calls for tougher sentencings for those who not only sell drugs that result in fatal overdoses, but those who supply them as well.

In Semler’s case, she supplied the drugs that killed her friend Werstler; Harper sold the deadly concoction to Bruhn.

It’s being increasingly used by prosecutors. Back in 2013, it factored in only 15 cases, according to figures from the state judicial association. Since then the law has been tweaked. It no longer requires the notion that the person intended to kill with the drugs. Now prosecutors need only prove the drug resulted in death. Last year the number of cases where the “drug delivery resulting in death” was filed spiked to 205.

But though they involved somewhat similar circumstances and similarly tragic results, the two cases also point out two very different doses of justice, in part because the two defendants took divergent paths through the court system.

Semler decided to take her chances and go to trial. She was convicted by a jury. Last week she was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Gene E. K. Pratter to 21 years in prison, even more than the 20-year mandatory minimum under federal law.

Harper entered into a plea deal and was sentenced to 40 to 80 months in prison by Delaware County Common Pleas Court Judge James Bradley.

For his part, Judge Bradley chose to look at the bigger picture, and perhaps the fallout from the opioid scourge in saying that “judges throughout the country are seeing things like this every day and I wish there was some way to put a stop to it right away.

“The brutal truth of the matter is that there is no such thing as an FDA-approved drug dealer. Drugs are dangerous. They kill people. And there are people out there who are going to facilitate that need.”

But they won’t necessarily all get treated the same way by the justice system, even with the new and improved “drug delivery resulting in death” law.

Just ask Emma Semler and Raheem Harper.