Data from the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) show that under 7 percent of people convicted in recent federal overdose cases represented high-ranking members of organized drug trafficking groups. More than half were found to be street-level distributors, who in most cases tried to help the victim if they could, and still received longer sentences than people convicted in non-overdose trafficking cases.
According to a USSC report released earlier in March, between 2019 and 2023, there were 1,340 people convicted on federal drug-trafficking charges whose case involved overdose. This includes both fatal and nonfatal overdose, 2,113 incidents in total.
About two-thirds of those were fatal. During the four years covered in the report, the proportion of overdose-involved drug trafficking cases increased by more than 44 percent. (However, these remain about 1.5 percent of federal trafficking cases overall.) On average, people whose cases did not involve any overdose reports were sentenced to 6.3 years in prison. The average for people linked to a non-fatal overdose was over 10 years.
“Trafficking” encompasses any role in the unregulated drug supply chain such as distributing, importing, manufacturing or possessing with intent to sell. In drug trafficking cases involving “death or serious bodily injury,” which applies to most overdose cases, the mandatory minimum sentence is 20 years. With relevant prior convictions, the minimum sentence is life.
There’s a pervasive stereotype that everyone who sells drugs is affiliated with some larger organization, and reports to some shadowy figure higher up the supply chain who counts their money and sends them back out with another large quantity of drugs. But because most of the people convicted in these cases are local sellers, they were less likely to trigger a mandatory minimum compared to people whose trafficking cases did not involve overdose, because they have relatively small quantities of drugs. However, of those who did trigger a mandatory minimum, about one in three received a sentence of 10 years or more. Only 1.5 percent of the mandatory minimums in non-overdose cases were that severe, and no one was sentenced to life.
There are a limited number of circumstances that qualify someone for an exemption from mandatory minimums. They can provide prosecutors with information that can be used to prosecute someone else. Or, if they provide information and their charge and criminal-legal history are relatively minor, they can sometimes receive a shorter sentence than what’s mandated even if prosecutors didn’t find the information useful. This is known as a “safety valve.” Most people convicted in overdose cases, even nonfatal ones, are automatically ineligible for this form of relief due to those cases being considered too serious.
There was no reprieve for those who tried to revive the victim but were not successful.
Only 160 people—12.2 percent—convicted on these charges were at the scene when the overdose occurred. Of those, more than half tried to help the victim.
While people convicted in fatal overdose cases who did not try to help were punished even more harshly, there was no reprieve for those who tried to revive the victim but were not successful. They received an average sentence length of 11.9 years—the same as people convicted in non-fatal cases who had not tried to help.
Almost all the fatal overdose cases were attributed to an opioid, mainly fentanyl. Only 5.1 percent of the overdose deaths were attributed to either methamphetamine or cocaine.
“While opioids were involved in most of the overdose deaths reported in this study,” the USCC stated, “they do not make up a large portion of the overall drug trafficking caseload.”
The substance that does make up the largest portion is methamphetamine, which was associated with the most nonfatal overdose cases in the report and which continues to be prosecuted by very different standards than other banned substances. The USSC is currently weighing proposed amendments to the sentencing guidelines.
Images (cropped) via United States Sentencing Commission
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