2020-02-10 The New Yorker

THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY10, 2020 33

Hoffer argues that dealers “invest in a
quantity of drug to resell,” or they “jug-
gle”—buy illicit substances and repack-
age them into smaller quantities for resale.
Crucially, brokers do not profit from
their role. Jamie’s finances worsened the
entire time she used heroin. Having bor-
rowed against both her paycheck and
her car title, she owed creditors thou-
sands of dollars in high-interest loans.
She scored some free drugs, helped some
people who were also struggling with
addiction, and made it through another
day without withdrawal.
No one has formally documented
how many Americans are going to prison
in overdose-homicide cases, but the
nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance found
that, between 2011 and 2016, media ref-
erences to such prosecutions rose by
more than three hundred per cent.
Northeastern’s study showed that Penn-
sylvania appears to lead the country;
Ohio runs second, with at least three
hundred and eighty-five cases in the
past two decades. In December, five
legal scholars, including Beletsky, asked
the Ohio Criminal Sentencing Com-

mission to reassess the state’s use of

overdose-homicide prosecutions. In one

exchange with the commission, the

scholars urged accountability that is

“proportionate to culpability.”

The sentences can be outlandish. In

2015 in Louisiana, Jarret McCasland,

whose girlfriend fatally overdosed, was

found guilty of second-degree murder

and automatically sentenced to life in

prison without parole. Nearly two thou-

sand people have signed a petition ar-

guing that McCasland is being pun-

ished “for being addicted to opiates,”

and that the verdict is a “slap in the face

to all who seek help from this painful

disease.” The judge said that it both-

ered him “tremendously” that he had

to impose a life sentence. McCasland’s

appeals attorney later said, “The court

was right to be troubled by a law that

equates poor judgment with murder.”

In Florida, in 2017, Jamie Nelson, a

drug user, gave another user, Tracy Skor-

nicka, a ride to find Nelson’s dealer, in

exchange for several dollars’ worth of

heroin. After Skornicka overdosed and

died, Nelson was charged with first-de-

gree murder. The state could have put

her to death. When Nelson’s lawyer,

Jeffrey Leukel, succeeded in getting the

murder charge dismissed, prosecutors

in Seminole County had Nelson in-

dicted for manslaughter. Leukel told me

that, for the prosecutors, “it’s more

important to them to save face than to

do the right thing.” Nelson, who was

also charged with distribution, now faces

a possible thirty years in prison.

Prosecutors and law-enforcement

officials are holding conferences and

online seminars to explain how their

colleagues could pursue overdose-ho-

micide cases. Defense attorneys, mean-

while, are scrambling to learn how to

respond to such prosecutions. North-

eastern recently published the second

edition of a defense “tool kit,” an eighty-

six-page manual inspired both by pros-

ecutors’ increasingly enthusiastic em-

brace of the approach and by anecdotal

reports of ineffective defense counsel.

The tool kit advises defense lawyers to

scrutinize autopsy reports, death cer-

tificates, and toxicology results: many

opioid-overdose deaths involve multi-

ple drugs, raising “significant” questions

about cause of death. In Pennsylvania,

the tool kit notes, some deaths have

been reported as overdoses “with no

toxicology reports.” One county coro-

ner, after the death of a friend’s son,

began classifying all fatal heroin over-

doses in his jurisdiction as homicides.

Politicians have often been oppor-

tunistic in their championing of over-

dose-homicide law. In his sentencing

memo, Adams, the defense attorney in

Wisconsin, wrote that many state pros-

ecutors criminalize addiction as a way

to “show action” in the face of the opi-

oid scourge. In 2017 alone, legislators

in at least thirteen states proposed new

laws. That year, a Florida sheriff warned,

in a video that went viral on social me-

dia, “If our agents can show the nexus

between you, the pusher of poison, and

the person that overdoses and dies, we

will charge you with murder.” The

sheriff was flanked by four officers wear-

ing body armor and balaclavas. Presi-

dent Donald Trump, who has called

for drug dealers to be put to death, has

not directly addressed overdose-homi-

cide cases, but in 2018 Attorney Gen-

eral Jeff Sessions declared that prose-

cutors “must consider every lawful tool

BOY

He found himself kneeling in mud

And asked the river for forgiveness.

The river punished him with silence.

His whole life it had consumed him,

The fear of doing it wrong, and now—

He walked among the trees

Like a gallery, uncertain where to start.

Afraid of looking at them wrong or in

The wrong order. His whole life

Even the streamlets, the streamlets had

Shied from him like mice. He _____

To be _____. In the clearing the dew

Evaporates. The grass looks dull, dutiful.

One by one, the components of feeling

Slide around his body without touching his

Body. His body is a snow globe. His thoughts

Snow. In him on him falls the snow. He is

Buried, utterly, like the sea is buried by rain.

—Annelyse Gelman