As fentanyl overdoses escalate county by county in California, local prosecutors are turning to a new legal strategy to stem the soaring death toll: charging drug dealers with murder.
In July, Placer County reached a landmark plea deal that sent one man to prison. 15 years left to live A man has been charged with second-degree murder for supplying a Roseville teen with fentanyl-tainted pills that turned out to be fatal.
A month later, a Riverside County jury returned the first verdict of its kind against another man who administered a fatal dose of fentanyl-laced pills to a 26-year-old woman. He was also convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to at least 15 years in prison.
district attorney sacramento, fresno, san joaquin, san bernardino and san diego Each county uses a similar blueprint. A suspected fentanyl dealer is being pursued on suspicion of murder, not drug sales. The hope is that the threat of tougher criminal penalties will ease the opioid crisis that has caused more deaths. 7,300 Californians in 2022.
Many of the counties that have adopted aggressive legal strategies are in California's “purple” or “red” regions, where conservative law enforcement leaders have long held tough-on-crime ideals. I have accepted it. Now, leaders in San Francisco, a city known for its ultra-liberal politics, are preparing to follow suit.
Mayor London Breed, law enforcement officials, and the District. Atty. Brooke Jenkins is currently in the final stages of forming the group. law enforcement task force It is tasked with investigating opioid deaths and illegal drug trafficking in the city as possible murders. The initiative is expected to begin this spring.
In an October statement announcing the initiative, Breed said synthetic opioid distributors were “warning that promoting this drug could lead to murder charges.” Jenkins said the initiative would make it easier to hold dealers “responsible for the true dangers of their actions.”
It's a surprising shift in rhetoric and strategy for a city that has been regularly denounced by right-wing pundits as an anything-goes sanctuary for drug dealers and users. The new approach is a decisive bow to growing pressure from residents and business leaders for the city to curb the illegal drug culture that has fed the homeless population and turned some downtown areas into filthy outdoor drug markets for people to use. It is shown that. They are dying on the streets.
The move to increase penalties for dealers comes after other high-profile public efforts failed to turn the tide in San Francisco's drug deaths. In late 2021, Breed declared a state of emergency for the Tenderloin region, making it theoretically easier to expand and connect users to treatment and detox services.
Last May, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom sent the California National Guard and California Highway Patrol to San Francisco to assist. investigation and prosecution A drug trafficking network serving the Tenderloin and South of Market areas. As of late January, the operation had resulted in 460 arrests and the seizure of 18,000 grams of fentanyl and 5,000 grams of methamphetamine, according to the governor's office.
Breed is also sponsoring a controversial March ballot measure. drug test required For certain people on welfare, she says, more people will receive treatment.
Despite the attention, accidental overdose deaths have increased and skyrocketed in the last year. Best ever 806 Most of those cases, at least 653, involved fentanyl, according to preliminary data from the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
“The reason I gave a clear directive to tackle this issue more aggressively has a lot to do with the loss of life and the violence surrounding the drug market,” Breed said. The story of losing my sister Due to a drug overdose about 20 years ago.
“We need to connect with the people who are selling this poison that is actually killing people because the number of overdoses is high and it's directly related to drugs,” she says.
That doesn't mean all overdose cases are prosecuted as murders. Instead, investigators will take a “very targeted approach,” Jenkins said. Investigators will work closely with the coroner's office and police to quickly respond to reported deaths and collect evidence that could link overdoses to specific drug sales.
Counties leading the new approach have found such cases difficult to prosecute. Prosecutors must convince jurors that the person who provided the drugs was responsible for the overdose and knew the sale could result in death. Even though some counties record hundreds of overdose deaths each year, district attorneys have treaded cautiously, filing only a few cases so far. .
Riverside County has been the most aggressive in employing this tactic, filing 34 cases against suspected dealers. Still, that's a fraction of the 572 opioid overdose deaths the county recorded in 2022, according to data from the California Department of Public Health. Distance Atty. Michael Hestrin's office says lawyers can prove dealers were clearly aware of the deadly risks associated with fentanyl and chose to “ignore those risks” in pursuit of profit. He said he is targeting lawsuits he believes in.
By comparison, Placer County has had five fentanyl-related homicides. Sacramento and San Bernardino have four. San Diego, 8 people. and Fresno, one.
“This should be used with caution and only when warranted,” Placer Township said. Atty. Morgan Gaia. “But if it's warranted, we'll do it.”
This tactic has little support in Los Angeles County. Atty. Georges Gascon is focusing resources on addiction prevention efforts and targeting high-level manufacturers and traffickers for prosecution. But some candidates running against him in the March primary appear to support this approach.
District attorneys who have adopted this strategy say these cases involve time-consuming investigations. Investigators scour cell phone records, text messages, social media accounts and other communications for evidence that the dealer knew the product was dangerous.
Guille said his office is reviewing the defendant's background, sales history and communications with customers. How did they get the fentanyl? Have they been around someone who died of an overdose? Have they ever experimented with drugs or overdosed?
“To prove that someone knows something, you have to prove what they're thinking. We have to get inside their head,” Geer said. said. “And the best way for us to do that is through what they say and what they do.”
This model may be difficult to replicate in San Francisco.
Many of the county prosecutors interviewed said they noticed an increase in the number of seemingly healthy young people in their communities who were dying of overdoses, usually after purchasing drugs online, and began filing murder charges. said. Many of the cases involve teenagers who were experimenting with pills, rather than hard-core drug addicts, who may not have known that the drugs they were buying contained fentanyl. .
By comparison, San Francisco's crisis is most visible and visceral among the homeless population, which includes long-time drug addicts who obtain drugs from multiple sources.
“Many of the deaths occur, especially on the streets, and it's difficult to trace the sellers,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins' team is seeking training from San Diego County, which has a similar predicament as San Francisco. homeless drug deaths. Since 2017, the county has charged eight defendants with murder in fentanyl-related deaths, according to the San Diego County Special District. Atty. Summer Stephen.
Opponents of the San Francisco task force are quick to point out that there is a lack of empirical data showing that charging street vendors with murder and sending them to long-term prisons is an effective deterrent. Several prosecutors interviewed by the Times said they could only cite anecdotal evidence that the strategy intimidated would-be dealers.
Keith Humphreys, a psychiatry professor at Stanford University who studies addiction, was skeptical that levying murder charges on low-level dealers would disrupt the drug supply chain.
“They're very low-skilled workers. You can spend $500,000, $1 million apiece to put them in state prison, but they'll be replaced almost immediately,” Han said. Freeze said. “When I say we can't keep arresting people on street corners, it's not out of pity. … It's pointless.”
Instead, Humphreys called for wider availability of the overdose-reversing nasal spray known as Narcan and for insurance companies to cover substantial mental health and addiction treatment. claims.
Some critics of the new initiative say that unless city leaders address the root causes of addiction, including a lack of affordable housing and effective treatment options and weaknesses in the social safety net, the city will continue to grow. argues that it will not make any serious progress.
“Purely punitive approaches don't work. If that worked, it would have worked for the last 100 years,” said San Francisco, whose district includes the Mission District, another district that struggles with public drug use. Secretary Hilary Ronen said.
Others cynically speculated that the task force was a calculated attempt to build goodwill among voters in an election year when both Breed and Jenkins are up for re-election.Breeds face particular problems tough re-election bid Compete against at least three other candidates.
Mr. Breed took a firm stance against criticism. She agrees that encouraging more people to seek treatment is a laudable goal. But city leaders must also be “ready to make difficult decisions to effect change” and be accountable to people, she said.
“The sale of poisonous substances should not be protected,” Breed said. “I'm frustrated by the criticism of people taking too hard a stance and saying people have no other way or no other choice. I don't agree with that.”
Jenkins also insists the initiative is not about politics or criminalizing drug users in the throes of addiction.
“I think that's an easy elementary discussion for them,” she said. “They have no responsibility to save the lives of people who are dying on the streets. I do.”
