A coroner in Lycoming County, Pa. has started ruling heroin overdoses as homicides—rather than accidents—by arguing that drug dealers who sell heroin are murderers.
It’s standard practice for coroners to mark an overdose as an accidental death. But according to the Associated Press, Lycoming County coroner Charles Kiessling Jr. abandoned protocol in an attempt to try to elevate awareness of the current opiate crisis, which in Pennsylvania has led to a 13% increase in overdose deaths in one year alone (2014).
The rogue coroner said that in Lycoming County, the heroin problem “doesn’t seem to be raising enough eyebrows.” He added, “Calling these accidents is sweeping it under the rug.”
He also has moral reasons for ruling overdoses as homicides: “If you are dealing drugs you are a murderer.” He argues in an interview with PennLive, “If you are selling heroin to someone and they die, isn’t that homicide?”
Pennsylvania law allows for what’s termed as “drug-induced homicide,” a charge of drug delivery resulting in death, which carries a maximum penalty of up to 40 years in prison. Such homicides, however, are difficult to prove in court, because drugs often go through many points of distribution before ending up in the hands of a user. Too often, the drug-induced homicide statute is applied to low-hanging fruit, like the friends of the victim who are also drug users.
Lycoming County District Attorney Eric Linhardt said to AP, “We have been able to prosecute only a handful of such cases with varying degrees of success,” but noted that his office will “continue to aggressively prosecute these cases where we are able.” The hope is that aggressive prosecution will deter drug dealers from entering the game, though there is little evidence to support this stance.
Kiessling Jr. is also the president of the Pennsylvania State Coroners Association, and consulted with the solicitor about whether any laws prevented him from making his ruling. It was determined that there is no state law which would prevent him from marking heroin overdoses as homicides.
While he is determined to move forward with his plan, the coroner said it only applies to cases involving heroin, not other opioids like oxycodone if the deceased has a valid prescription.
So far, Kiessling Jr. has ruled one overdose death in 2016 as a homicide—there are four potential others, pending the results of toxicology reports.