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7th District denies new trial for man who sold fatal fentanyl dose
TRACEY BLAIR
Legal News Reporter
Published: October 28, 2020
A Columbiana County trial court did not err by finding a drug-dealing defendant caused the overdose death of a client by providing her with fentanyl-laced heroin, the 7th District Court of Appeals recently ruled.
Rubin Williams appealed after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter and drug trafficking and sentenced to 11 years in prison. He argued the contributing role played by the fentanyl he allegedly provided to the decedent did not establish his drug trafficking was the actual cause of her overdose death due to the mix of drugs in her system.
He relied on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Burrage case, and the Fifth District’s application of Burrage to reverse a conviction for involuntary manslaughter in Kosto, a case involving a mixed drug overdose.
On Oct. 15, 2016, Jennifer Bettis – who had been babysitting her friend’s 1-year-old child - was found deceased in a chair at the kitchen table of her Salem apartment.
Court testimony indicated that Williams’ drug runner was to deliver $40 worth of heroin to Bettis. Instead, she received a pink substance containing fentanyl, and she died after injecting it.
The toxicology report showed her blood contained fentanyl, benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety), dextromethorphan (cough suppressant) and gabapentin (anti-convulsant).
The decedent’s husband testified that Bettis had no chronic health conditions. Police tracked down Williams after looking at private messages on Bettis’ Facebook account about drug transactions to a person with the profile name of “Scrooug McDuck.”
Nicole Miladore-Mitchell, who was in jail on drug offenses, testified that the day before the delivery, she personally overdosed from heroin Williams gave her. Prior to injecting it, she observed that it was pink while heroin is usually brown.
The coroner testified that Bettis’ death would not have occurred without fentanyl.
Testifying in his own defense, Williams argued Miladore-Mitchell supplied drugs to the decedent, not him. He denied speaking to Bettis through his Facebook account.
The appellate panel first addressed the Burrage case before rejecting Williams’ request for a new trial.
In Burrage, the decedent’s blood contained multiple drugs in addition to heroin metabolites, including codeine, alprazolam, clonazepam metabolites, and oxycodone.
After a jury convicted the defendant and the circuit court affirmed, the Supreme Court granted certiorari on two issues: “Whether the defendant may be convicted under the ‘death results’ provision (1) when the use of the controlled substance was a “contributing cause” of the death, and (2) without separately instructing the jury that it must decide whether the death by drug overdose was a foreseeable result of the defendant's drug-trafficking offense.”
The government in that case conceded that there was no evidence the decedent “would have lived but for his heroin use,” and the court reversed the defendant’s conviction.
However, the state argued that Williams differs from Burrage, and 7th District Judge Carol Ann Robb agreed in her 3-0 opinion.
“Our case is distinguishable from the Supreme Court’s Burrage case as the testimony in the case at bar indicated that the decedent believed she was receiving and injecting heroin, not fentanyl,” Robb wrote. “The coroner explained that a quarter of an inch of heroin in a vial compares to a mere two drops of fentanyl. A rational person could find the state showed fentanyl was an independent cause of death (which would have occurred even if she had no other drugs in her system) as the evidence shows the decedent took a ‘lethal dose’ of fentanyl thinking it was heroin.”
In addition, Robb noted that Williams is distinguishable from Burrage since the state established that fentanyl was the but-for cause of death.
“The coroner specifically testified that the decedent ingested a lethal dose of fentanyl and she would not have died if she had not used the fentanyl,” Robb wrote. “… Here, the coroner testified to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the decedent’s cause of death was asphyxia and drug overdose. The death certificate reported: the immediate cause of death was asphyxia, a condition leading to the cause was mixed drug overdose, and the injury occurred when the decedent took a lethal dose of drugs.”
Appellate judges Cheryl L. Waite and David A. D’Apolito concurred. The case is cited State v. Williams, 2020-Ohio-4430.