Pennsylvania overdose death prosecutions target fellow drug users instead of high-level dealers

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court declined to add new legal protections for defendants accused of providing drugs that caused a deadly overdose, reported The Associated Press and SpotlightPA.

The decision from the state’s highest court addressed a frequent criticism of overdose death prosecutions in Pennsylvania: that they target fellow drug users instead of high-level dealers.

In a majority opinion issued Tuesday, justices upheld convictions in two separate drug delivery resulting in death cases, saying state law has a broad definition of “delivery” and “does not differentiate between drug dealers and co-users for purposes of delivery of illegal narcotics.”

Despite ruling against the defendants, Justice Daniel McCaffery said the court “cannot ignore the fact that” the “proposed defense makes sense — some believe drug dealers should be punished more harshly than drug users.”

“Nevertheless, this type of policy determination is for the General Assembly, not the courts,” McCaffery added.

Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, Sallie Updyke Mundy, and P. Kevin Brobson joined that majority opinion.

In a concurring opinion, Justice David Wecht also distinguished between the roles of justices and state lawmakers.

“The General Assembly does not violate the Constitution when it violates common sense,” Wecht said. “It is undoubtedly true that the DDRD statute was meant to target drug dealers, not drug users,” he continued, referring to drug delivery resulting in death.

But Wecht said “the spirit of the law is in considerable tension with its text” and “it is the latter that binds us.” Chief Justice Debra Todd joined his concurring opinion.

Spotlight PA reported on the two cases earlier this year that highlighted the emotionally charged issue in Pennsylvania, where supplying drugs in fatal overdoses has led to hundreds of state prison sentences.

Pennsylvania is known as a national leader for bringing this type of criminal charge, but prosecution rates vary widely between counties and grieving families are divided over whether these prosecutions do more harm than good, Spotlight PA has found. Supporters say these cases bring needed accountability, while critics say the fear of spending decades in prison discourages people from calling for help if someone overdoses.

Cases with a drug delivery resulting in death charge, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 40 years, were filed more than 680 times from 2021 through 2025.

The two cases before the state Supreme Court focused on the question of what happens when people “jointly and constructively acquire and use drugs.” Justices considered whether that should be a defense for drug delivery resulting in death charges and similar offenses — and if so, whether that’s sufficient for an acquittal or entitles the defense to a jury instruction that addresses the issue of joint possession.

Both cases, which were consolidated together for Pennsylvania Supreme Court arguments, involved prosecutions that occurred in York County.

York County District Attorney Tim Barker previously told Spotlight PA the evidence in the cases went “well beyond any characterization of a minimal ‘sharing’ of drugs.” Barker described how the office seeks “rehabilitation and diversion where appropriate,” but “will always seek accountability for criminal conduct that harms victims, especially when the actions cause the death of another.”

Anthony Tambourino, an attorney for the defendants, had advocated for recognizing the “common sense reality” of how people use drugs and said the drug delivery resulting in death law was “not meant to criminalize every drug handoff among co-users.”

Tambourino works for the York County Office of Conflict Counsel, which serves clients who can’t be represented by the local public defender’s office due to a conflict of interest. He has emphasized “that my views on the matter are my own and not reflective of” the county government.

C. Melissa Owen, an attorney and president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, was disappointed with the court’s decision.

“It is unthinkable that joint drug use can be made a homicide,” she told Spotlight PA. “We anticipate this ruling will further discourage individuals from seeking help during an overdose, causing the very harm the law purports to prevent.”

Pastefforts to limit the use of drug delivery resulting charges have not gone far in the state legislature. Some bills currently pending in the General Assembly would give prosecutors more time to file these charges.

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Analyst suggests spending "a lot" of money has altered the arch of violence

Jeff Asher, a crime-data analyst who frequently writes about the crime rates and runs the firm AH Datalytics, which powers the Real Time Crime Index, talked to New York Magazine about falling violent crime:

I would say that the thing that resonates strongest with me is that this has all been national in scope. It went up everywhere, and it’s going down pretty much everywhere. It’s happening in an environment where we didn’t see dramatic increases in policing, and we didn’t see huge increases in clearance rates — they plunged in 2020 and 2021 and have recovered since then, but that largely reflects the fact that we’ve just got fewer crimes, which usually means higher clearance rates. So there hasn’t been some massive improvement from law enforcement. A lot of times activists will talk about the root causes of crime — how you’ve got to fix poverty, you’ve got to fix education. We didn’t fix any of that. And the country is still awash in guns.

The trend started in 2023, so the “why” probably has its roots in things that happened in 2021 and 2022, because these things don’t usually change suddenly. So what are the explanations that fit? An article I wrote last summer focused heavily on investing in communities. We spent a lot of money on a lot of things, some of which had direct crime-fighting benefits to it, like the Department of Justice increasing its budget for grants by a billion dollars between 2021 and 2023 and 2024. A lot of those went to programs specifically designed to reduce violence, and a lot went to things that are not specifically directly tied to violence reduction but that we know have crime-fighting benefits: enormous increases in state- and local-government infrastructure, spending on streets and highways, on lighting, on neighborhood and social centers, on public-safety infrastructure. So a lot of money was available. We threw a lot of crap at the wall and we don’t know what stuck, but some of it undoubtedly stuck.

After writing that piece, I’ve been struck by other stuff that’s also plunging at the same rate. You look at drug overdoses, you look at traffic-accident deaths, alcohol deaths, suicides. And you look at something like carjackings, which I have a piece I’m going to run about in the next few weeks. Carjackings are down an insane amount. In Chicago, they’re down like 70 percent between 2021 and 2025. And carjackings are very specific, because they are, even more than murder, a young person’s crime. The average age of an offender is much younger than that of a shoplifting or a home burglary. So to see carjackings go up so much in 2020 and then plunge since 2022, 2023, suggests more of a societal change to me. You combine the drug-overdose deaths and the alcohol-related deaths and the murders and the carjackings, and it points to something that broke in the U.S. in 2020, and which is now healing. When I think about what’s driving this, it’s a combination of spending a lot of money on a lot of stuff, and some of it working, and that the thing that broke and caused all of this to go up is not as broken anymore.

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Texas prisons see spike in overdose deaths

K2 is a psychoactive drug that targets the same part of the brain as THC, but the effects can be far different from those of marijuana, in part because many doses have been heavily adulterated with harmful chemicals. Synthetic cannabinoids don’t make up a large part of the free-world drug market, but at least one study found their use is increasing. K2, also referred to as “spice,” has been circulating in prisons and state jails since at least 2017. 

Worse, the number of people whose deaths in state jails or prisons were attributed to synthetic cannabinoids increased from 16 in 2023 to 65 the following year, reported the Texas Observer. And this is likely an undercount, given that synthetic compounds can be difficult for labs to detect in standard drug tests or postmortem toxicology screens.

The rise in K2 deaths is part of a disturbing trend: Between January 2020 and July 2025, at least 189 Texas prisoners died of drug-related causes—and each year through 2024 was deadlier than the last. In 110 cases, synthetic cannabinoids were confirmed or suspected to have caused or contributed to in-custody deaths, according to a Texas Observer analysis of reports filed to the state’s Office of the Attorney General. Most overdoses were attributed to drugs illicitly smuggled into state lockups. Another 128 people in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) died of accidental or unknown causes during that period that could have been linked to drug overdoses, based on symptoms or circumstances described in related records, the Observer’s analysis found.

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG)—governed by the Texas Board of Criminal Justice but independent from TDCJ itself—launched an investigation into Wiley’s overdose the very same night. That’s routine in such cases, according to Amanda Hernandez, communications director for the prison system. “TDCJ has zero tolerance for illegal substances and contraband,” she said. “If any person, whether that is inmate, staff, volunteer, [or] visitor is caught bringing illicit substances into any TDCJ facility, the Office of Inspector General is immediately called to investigate.”

Hutchins saw three drug-related deaths in 2024, the most of any state jail. Wiley was one of two confirmed K2-related deaths at the unit that year: Daniel Jacob Sauceda, 22, died six months later of synthetic cannabinoid toxicity. Another man, 62-year-old Victor Blanco, died April 18 after overdosing on prescription drugs.

Hutchins is part of a state jail system created in the 1990s primarily to house people convicted of relatively minor drug and property crimes. State jails were billed as places where low-level criminals serving short sentences, like Wiley, might get help with addictions. But, over the years, experts say that state jails experienced a kind of mission creep, as higher-level criminals were locked up at the facilities and as drugs seemingly circulated freely. With a high proportion of drug users, large and crowded living areas, scant educational programming, and less advanced medical facilities than prisons, these units can become breeding grounds for drug use.

For those who do make it to their release dates, a 2019 state House committee report found that their time has typically been wasted: “State jails … merely warehouse inmates who unproductively serve out their time until being released, with no new resources, into the same conditions that led them to jail in the first place—most often, drug addiction and poverty,” the report reads, concluding the facilities should be abolished or “overhauled in every respect.”

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Drug overdose deaths down 17% according to CDC

Drug overdose deaths in the United States fell 17% between July 2023 and July 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a recent report, according to CBS News. 

Since 2021, over 100,000 people have died of overdoses each year in the United States. A record number of overdose deaths — over 108,000 — were recorded in 2022. The numbers dipped in 2023 and have continued to drop monthly throughout 2024. 

While overdose deaths for 2024 have not been calculated yet, and will not be until after the end of the year, the CDC said that deaths fell 17% in a one-year period. It's the largest decrease in deaths ever seen in the United States, White House Domestic Policy Council Advisor Neera Tanden said Wednesday. 

White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Dr. Rahul Gupta said the decrease shows that the Biden administration's efforts to reduce overdose deaths are working. 

The vast majority of overdose deaths in the United States involve opioids, including fentanyl. There has been a decrease in such deaths, CBS News previously reported, but a rise in deaths involving psychostimulants like meth and cocaine.

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Since 2015, Fentanyl has killed more soldiers than combat

How many soldiers have died from fentanyl, a lethal synthetic opioid? Fentanyl abuse has hit the Army the hardest among military branches and caused a record number of fatal overdoses among soldiers in 2021, the last complete year of data available, according to new figures obtained by The Washington Post.

The emerging scope of drug abuse in the military has alarmed lawmakers, who in late May introduced a bill to compel the Pentagon to publicly release overdose data each year, as well improve treatment for personnel suffering from addiction. The proposed legislation comes as experts say the services have done a poor job tracking overdoses, which have increased among active duty troops in the last two years. And many families contend that preventive measures, including urinalysis tests and rehabilitation, fall short.

Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and five other lawmakers who introduced the bill pointed to rising overdose deaths at Fort Liberty, N.C., and other Army posts, warning that “hundreds of service members have lost their lives to overdose and thousands more nearly did.” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a veteran who signed onto the bill, called the overdoses across the entire military “an institutional failure and a threat to our national defense.”

The lack of clear data is further complicated by the emergence of fentanyl, which poses an especially acute threat because of its deadly potency and its tendency to be blended with other drugs or disguised as prescription pills.

The Army lost 127 soldiers to fentanyl between 2015 and 2022, according to casualty records obtained by The Post through the Freedom of Information Act. That’s more than double the number of Army personnel killed in combat in Afghanistan during that same period.

At least 27 soldiers died from fentanyl in 2021, the Army’s deadliest year yet. But in February, when asked by senators for statistics on fentanyl overdoses, Pentagon officials reported a number that was half of the figure contained in the records obtained by The Post. When asked about the discrepancy, Pentagon spokeswoman Jade Fulce blamed an accounting mistake.

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Overdose deaths soar in 2020, up nearly 30%

As Covid raged, so did the country’s other epidemic. Drug overdose deaths rose nearly 30 percent in 2020 to a record 93,000, according to preliminary statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s the largest single-year increase recorded, reported by The New York Times.

The deaths rose in every state but two, South Dakota and New Hampshire, with pronounced increases in the South and West.

Several grim records were set: the most drug overdose deaths in a year; the most deaths from opioid overdoses; the most overdose deaths from stimulants like methamphetamine; the most deaths from the deadly class of synthetic opioids known as fentanyls.

“It’s huge, it’s historic, it’s unheard of, unprecedented, and a real shame,” said Daniel Ciccarone, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies heroin markets. “It’s a complete shame.”

In recent years, annual drug overdose deaths had already eclipsed the peak yearly deaths from car crashes, gun violence or the AIDS epidemic.

The death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 375,000 last year, the largest American mortality event in a century, but drug deaths were experienced disproportionately among the young. In total, the 93,000 deaths cost Americans about 3.5 million years of life, according to a New York Times analysis. By comparison, coronavirus deaths in 2020 were responsible for about 5.5 million years of life.

The pandemic itself undoubtedly contributed to the surge in overdose deaths, with disruption to outreach and treatment facilities and increased social isolation. Overdose deaths reached a peak nationally in the spring of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic’s most severe period of shutdowns and economic contraction. But public health experts said there had been a pre-pandemic pattern of escalating deaths, as fentanyls became more entrenched in the nation’s drug supply, replacing heroin in many cities and finding their way into other drugs like meth.

After decades of increases, overdose deaths dipped slightly in 2018. But they resumed their upward course in 2019, and drug deaths were rising in the early months of 2020, even before Covid arrived.

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Sen. Toomey and local officials discuss overdose deaths

Sen. Pat Toomey sat down with Lehigh County law enforcement, addiction specialists and health officials to find out what impact the pandemic had on drug deaths, reported WFMZ-TV.

According to the district attorney's office, drug deaths were up nine percent in 2020, and stand at 69 deaths year to date.

But the DA says some of those deaths are not Lehigh County residents.

"We have a significant number of people from surrounding counties come to Allentown to buy the drugs and overdose here," said Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin.

Martin says the Lehigh County Drug Task Force is working aggressively to tackle the out-of-county issue.

And programs like Blue Guardian are helping residents get into treatment within 72 hours of an overdose, with a 50-percent success rate.

Ibn Quawee, an addiction recovery specialist, says in addition to a spike in illegal drugs, there's also an increase in the use of the dangerous synthetic drug K2. He says fear is a major barrier when it comes to treatment.

"A lot of fear of wanting treatment and having to make the choice of whether to have an apartment or am I gonna lose my children," Quawee said.

Health officials told Toomey more needs to be done to tackle why people turn to drugs in the first place.

"The underlying mental health issues, the addictive nature and the problems that develop in the brain that are associated with addiction and increases the incidence of relapse," Toomey said.

Toomey says he's working on several bills that deal with drug treatment, banning analog drugs and penalizing countries that manufacture and ship illegal drugs to the U.S.

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Drug overdoses continue to rise nationwide

 Even as the state races to vaccinate thousands of Pennsylvanians against COVID-19, public health officials are still waging an ongoing fight against substance abuse, reported the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

Preliminary data compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that 88,295 people nationwide died from a drug overdose between August 2019 and August 2020, a 27 percent increase from the previous year, NBC News-Montana reported. Opioids and synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, were responsible for most of the fatalities, according to NBC News.

In Pennsylvania, the number of reported deaths increased by 17.1 percent during that August to August timeframe, from 4,277 in 2019 to 5,008 in 2020, the CDC data showed.

To help combat that wave of abuse, the state Department of Drug and Alcohol Services has announced that it will award $2.7 million in grants to what are known as "recover community groups" that help people who are in recovery from substance use disorder.

Such groups are "non-profit organizations led and governed by representatives of local communities of recovery. These organizations are comprised of staff and volunteers from the recovery community," DDAP spokesperson Alison Gantz told the Capital-Star in an email. The RASE Project in Harrisburg is an example of such a group. 

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GateHouse: This country’s other growing and deadly epidemic

Matthew T. Mangino

GateHouse Media

May 8, 2020

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been engrossed in a battle to control an epidemic in this country that in 2018 alone took 67,367 lives. The epidemic is not a new strain of influenza, Ebola or some other deadly infectious disease. The epidemic is drug abuse resulting in overdose deaths.

According to the CDC, drug overdoses are the leading cause of accidental death in the United States. Nearly 70% of the 67,367 deaths in 2018 involved an opioid. Opioid addiction is the driving force behind the epidemic.

Ironically, the birth of the opioid epidemic can be traced to an effort to help people fight chronic pain. OxyContin, a time-release pain reliever, was approved by the government in 1995 and launched for use in the U.S. in 1996. FDA approval was granted to Purdue Pharma, a family-owned business, because of the drug’s 12-hour time-release component. At the time those suffering from chronic pain only had temporary relief every four hours. Within a couple of years, OxyContin exploded onto the illicit drug scene. The time-release aspect of OxyContin was easily defeated by chewing or crushing the tablet - causing a powerful high. Purdue had the opportunity to stop the supply of OxyContin to offices and clinics across the country that were serving as nothing more than pill mills generating enormous profit and providing very little medical care.

Purdue Pharma is a privately held company owned by the Sackler family. Late last year, the family agreed to pay $3 billion over the next seven years to victims’ families, reported the New York Times.

Some of the states with the highest rates of death due to drug overdose are West Virginia (51.5 per 100,000), Pennsylvania (36.1 per 100,000) and Ohio (35.9 per 100,000). The magnitude of the opioid epidemic comes into focus when one compares the overdose deaths with the current COVID-19 death rate in those states, West Virginia (2.7 per 100,000), Pennsylvania (22.6 per 100,000) and Ohio (8.9 per 100,000).

The CDC acknowledges that a pandemic in the midst of an epidemic can be catastrophic. Opioid-related deaths are on the rise during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brittany Shultz, a substance abuse specialist with the York County Opioid Collaborative in central Pennsylvania explained to WHP-TV in Harrisburg how “a combination of fears and increased isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to the rise in overdose deaths.”

Restrictions on movement may lead those with a substance abuse disorder to opt to purchase drugs from less trusted sources, raising the risk of overdosing on drugs that may be stronger than anticipated or tainted.

Narcan, an opioid overdose antidote, has been hailed as a miracle drug. The drug administered by medical staff, police officers and even fellow drug users have pulled people out of a deadly overdose by administering an easy-to-use antidote.

Even in spite of readily available Narcan, overdoses continue to rise. Some suggest that drug users locked down in their homes during the pandemic don’t have friends to call for help or to administer an antidote.

The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated the lives of those in recovery. The loss of employment and social relationships has caused considerable mental health hardship to those already vulnerable to risky behavior.

While this country wages war and dedicates enormous attention and resources to this mysterious and deadly virus, and rightfully so, this country cannot afford to ignore a killer that has been with us for years and will continue to plague America for years to come.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.

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Ohio doctor behind 28 overdose deaths

Troy Allison received a 1,000 microgram dose of fentanyl, which is used in hospitals to treat severe pain, although typically in much smaller amounts, reported NBC News.

Troy Allison's death and at least 33 others involving Mount Carmel patients from 2015 to 2018 remain part of a wider internal investigation into Dr. William Husel, who treated them, and why the intensive care doctor allegedly ordered "significantly excessive and potentially fatal" doses of pain medication in 28 of the cases, according to the hospital.

Husel's medical license was suspended Friday by the State Medical Board of Ohio, which said the allegations against him were so serious that he was not afforded a hearing prior to the board's vote and can no longer practice medicine in the state.

Yet, key questions remain unanswered: Why such high doses, and were they the result of repeated mistakes — or intentionally meant to be deadly?

Doctors, pharmacists and lawyers who spoke with NBC News say hospitals such as Mount Carmel, one of the largest health systems in Ohio, have multiple safeguards in place that should prevent patients from being overmedicated to death. There are checks and balances allowing those in the chain of command to trigger an alarm, the medical experts added, so that an error can be avoided or reviewed after the fact, including during emergency situations in which dangerous drugs such as fentanyl are used.Related

"We know that the risk for error goes up in chaotic situations, but hospitals have worked hard to limit these risks and do a very good job protecting safety in fast-paced environments like the emergency room or intensive care unit," said Dr. Daniel Tobin, an associate professor of medicine at Yale University and a leading expert on opioid safety.

At least six wrongful death lawsuits have been filed on behalf of deceased patients, including Troy Allison, alleging Husel ordered the doses either negligently or purposefully in order to hasten the end of their lives.

All Christine Allison knows is that her husband of 11 years, her best friend and a father of two, was taken from her — and she wants Husel to explain why.

"He actually seemed very kind and very compassionate. I trusted him," she said of the doctor. "Now I think he needs to be in prison. The system failed."

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The Vindicator: Ohio on right track with justice reform

Matthew T. Mangino

The Youngstown Vindicator

July 15, 2018

When crime rises, the first inclination of lawmakers is punishment. Longer sentences, mandatory minimums and extended periods of supervision all add to the cost of the criminal justice system with little impact on the rate of recidivism.

For politicians, that’s a tough sale to the public. Trying to convince taxpayers that it’s more prudent and cost effective to invest in rehabilitation rather than punishment can cost a lawmaker his job.

Ohio is in a position to proceed with meaningful sentence reform without waiting on politicians to act. A bipartisan coalition of community, law enforcement, faith and business leaders has proposed a ballot measure for November to reduce penalties for nonviolent drug offenders.

Signatures

Supporters of the “Neighborhood Safety, Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation” amendment submitted 730,031 signatures recently to the various county election boards. The Ohio Secretary of State has until July 24 to certify or reject signatures. To qualify for the ballot, 305,591 valid signatures of Ohio registered voters are needed.

The reform initiative comes at a time when Ohio is in the midst of one of the nation’s most lethal periods of drug abuse. Ohio’s drug overdose deaths rose 39 percent – the third-largest increase nationwide – between mid-2016 and mid-2017, according to figures released earlier this year by the federal government.

The state’s opioid crisis continued to explode in the first half of last year, with 5,232 Ohio overdose deaths recorded in the 12 months ending June 30, 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Just across the border, Pennsylvania saw the largest increase in overdose deaths during that same period.

The escalation of drug deaths in Ohio was nearly three times the 14.4 percent increase in deaths nationally, which grew to about 67,000 across the U.S., according to government estimates.

In Columbus, Franklin County Coroner Anahi Ortiz said that the more recent estimates are even more grim.

“Compare the first three quarters of 2017 to the first three quarters of 2016,” Ortiz told the Columbus Dispatch. “So, an actual comparison day by day – we’ve already seen a 57 percent increase.”

Fentanyl is what’s mostly spurring the additional deaths, officials said. The synthetic opiate has been cut into the heroin supply and, in some cases, replaced heroin that’s sold on the streets, reported the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Fentanyl is more deadly because it’s about 50 percent stronger than heroin and is being altered to create a more potent fentanyl, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

Ohio’s reform initiative is risky. It is a long-term investment when people are looking for an immediate fix. Money saved from those affected by the amendment would be diverted to substance-abuse programs and to crime victims’ services.

Under the drug treatment and rehabilitation amendment, possessing, obtaining or using a drug or drug paraphernalia would be a misdemeanor offense, with a maximum punishment of 180 days in jail and $1,000 fine. First and second offenses within a two-year period could only be punished with probation. The amendment would not apply to drug dealers.

Half-day credit

Convicted individuals could receive a half-day credit against their sentence for each day of rehabilitative work or programming, up to 25 percent of the total sentence.

An individual on probation for a felony would not be sent to prison for a non-violent violation of probation.

The question facing policy makers: Is public safety better served by incarcerating drug offenders, or would drug treatment and prevention programs be more efficient and effective at curbing drug abuse and promoting public safety?

According to the Justice Policy Institute, studies by the nation’s leading criminal justice research agencies have shown that drug treatment, in concert with other services and programs, is a more cost effective way to deal with drug offenders.

Ohio appears to be on the right track.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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GateHouse: Drug court works, but enrollment is on the decline

Matthew T. Mangino

GateHouse Media

December 29, 2017

Countless state and local government bodies have taken action in response to the opioid crisis. However, the death toll continues to rise. The New York Times estimated that 59,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2016, and based on projections by the Centers for Disease Control for 2017, an estimated 66,000 people will die of drug overdoses.

Data for this year is still incomplete because of the time it takes to conduct death and toxicology investigations. However, Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics says the 2017 estimates are alarming. “The fact that the data is incomplete and they represent an increase is concerning,” he said.

“Our current addiction crisis and especially the epidemic of opioid deaths will get worse before it gets better,” President Donald Trump said as he formally declared the crisis a public health emergency in October.

One effort to tackle the nation’s exploding opioid crisis is legislative action to impose lighter sentences for drug offenders. The Justice Reinvestment Initiative—implemented in more than half of the states—has been praised as a forward-thinking solution to a host of criminal justice problems, including the overcrowding of prisons and jails.

Reducing sentences for drug offenders opens prison beds for violent offenders and others the court deems likely to commit major crimes. Fewer inmates means lower prison costs, freeing up state dollars to reinvest in treatment programs and other long-term solutions to criminal activity.

However, the unforeseen consequence of lighter sentences is a nationwide drop in enrollment of highly successful drug courts.

Drug court is a minimum 12-month intensive, court-supervised program. Drug-dependent offenders are enrolled in drug courts in lieu of traditional justice system case processing. According to the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, drug court participants are provided with treatment services that help them get sober, and stay sober.

Participants are held accountable by the drug court through regular drug testing; frequent court appearances to enable the judge to review progress; and rewards for doing well or sanctions when not complying.

Researchers in a number of studies found that drug courts reduced recidivism. According to the National Institute of Justice, one study found that within a two-year period, the felony re-arrest rate decreased from 40 percent before the drug court to 12-percent after the drug court started in one county, and the felony re-arrest rate decreased from 50-percent to 35-percent in another county.

Few policymakers saw that removing the threat of a felony conviction—and a lengthy sentence—would inadvertently reduce the incentive for offenders to choose to participate in drug court.

According to Governing Magazine, drug court was an attractive alternative for someone facing a five-year sentence and a felony conviction on their record. Now according to Brent Kelsey, assistant director of the Utah Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, when the potential penalty is a few days or months in jail, drug offenders are less likely to enroll in a 12-month drug court.

In November 2014, California passed Proposition 47, The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act. The voter-approved referendum reduced penalties for drug possession and other non-violent felonies, including commercial burglary, forgery, grand theft and possession of a controlled substance.

San Bernardino County (CA) District Attorney Michael A. Ramos said that without the bargaining chip of lowering felonies to misdemeanors, Proposition 47 has erased any incentive to compel defendants into drug court.

“Our drug court’s basically non-existent,” Ramos told the Victorville Daily Press. The evidence is clear that drug courts have a positive impact. Will the same be true for reforms driven by Justice Reinvestment Initiatives?

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Murder without homicide: Man sentenced to life for over-dose death

Consider the case of Jessie McKim, a man who is serving a life sentence without parole in Missouri after he was convicted in 1999 of strangling a woman named Wendy Wagnon, reports The Marshall Project. There are a handful of legal reasons to doubt the justice of the verdict against him — allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, disreputable witnesses and ineffective assistance of counsel, for example — but what distinguishes his story is the fact that there now is little reason to believe that Wagnon was murdered at all.

There is, instead, a consensus from several veteran forensic pathologists, doctors with thousands of cases as expert witnesses behind them, that Wagnon died from a self-administered overdose of methamphetamine after a weekend binge of drug use. If this is true, the prosecution’s original trial theory cannot be true. And that theory, as prosecutors and their medical examiner had told jurors in 1999, is that Wagnon died after being suffocated by McKim or his co-defendant, his uncle, a man named James Peavler.

No homicide, no murder case, no possible conviction, right? Wrong. No state or federal court has been willing to grant McKim relief despite what the doctors now say. In 2013, a local judge conducted a three-day hearing on the issue and concluded that Wagnon did, indeed, die of a meth overdose; that the medical examiner had gotten his cause-of-death wrong. But that judge denied McKim’s request for relief anyway, concluding that there were procedural reasons for barring his claims and, alternatively, that McKim had not conclusively proven his innocence because of a new theory state attorneys offered to explain the crime.

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Overdose deaths more than doubled in U.S.

Drug overdose deaths more than doubled from 1999 to 2012, according to a new CDC National Center for Health Statistics's report, reported Time.

The new data shows drug overdose deaths from drugs like painkillers and heroin have risen from 6.1 per 100,000 population in 1999 to 13.1 in 2012. Drug overdose deaths involving heroin in particular have nearly tripled over the time period.
According to the report, in 2012 alone, there were 41,502 drug overdose deaths, of which 16,007 involved opioid analgesics and 5,925 involved heroin.   
It's no question America has a painkiller problem. An earlier CDC report from July revealed that 46 people die from an overdose of prescription painkillers every day. The data also showed that doctors in the U.S. wrote 259 million prescriptions for painkillers in 2012, which comes out to enough for every American adult to have a bottle of pills. States with overall higher rates were primarily in the south.
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Overdoses from prescription painkillers down

New federal data show deaths from prescription painkillers have decreased for the first time since 1999, while heroin deaths have surged, suggesting some addicts may have turned to illicit drugs as new federal and state restrictions made prescription narcotics harder to get, reported USA Today.
Abuse of prescription opioids, such as the powerful painkiller OxyContin, fueled a surge in overdose deaths, which quadrupled from 4,030 deaths in 1999 to 16,917 deaths in 2011. The numbers are based on mortality data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2012, the latest year available, deaths from prescription painkillers dropped 5% to 16,007, according to CDC data made public by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Deaths from all categories of prescription drugs dropped 3%, the data shows.
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