The Ohio Supreme Court reinstated the conviction of a woman who brokered $15 worth of heroin for a man who later died of a fatal overdose.
The ruling Thursday means Carol Seymour will serve a four-year sentence stemming from her convictions of involuntary manslaughter, corrupting another with drugs, and trafficking in heroin.
Seymour acted as a “go between” for dealers and users, taking a small fee from sales to feed her own habit, she said to police. In January 2019, she drove the victim, a male with a nearly 20-year history of opioid use, to a drug dealer’s home and bought him about $15 worth of heroin, court records show.
The man repaid her in anti-freeze for her car. He died later that day, at home in his mother’s house, of an overdose. He was surrounded by a needle, a plate with a spoon and straw, and other paraphernalia.
Officials later detected the presence of heroin and three other drugs in his system: Benadryl, Ritalin (a stimulant), and kratom, an herbal supplement with purported benefits during opioid withdrawal that has appeared in an increasing number of fatal overdoses.
The Supreme Court rejected arguments that it’s unclear whether the heroin alone caused the death, and set a new legal standard that will make it easier for prosecutors to secure convictions when fatal overdoses with multiple substances involved occur.
Public defenders representing Seymour argued that it wasn’t the heroin alone that caused her death, but the combined effects of the four drugs in concert. A panel of judges from the Tenth Appellate District agreed. As they noted, neither the forensic toxicologist nor the pathologist on the case could say for certain at trial whether the heroin alone killed the man as opposed to the whole cocktail.
Plus, they said Seymour’s actions seem to stem from her own struggles with addiction and that she is a dubious target for a prosecution.
But the Supreme Court justices, six Republicans and one Democrat, were adamant about the cause of death of the victim, who they only identified as Adam. (His name is published in other court records, but Signal Ohio is not publishing the name of the deceased.)
“Though there was no direct testimony that Adam would have lived if he had not taken the heroin, we see considerable circumstantial evidence in the record that indicates that the heroin caused Adam’s overdose death,” Justice Dan Hawkins wrote for the court.
Hawkins noted the toxicologist said at trial that Adam had a “high concentration” of kratom and enough heroin that’s “typical” to see in a fatal overdose.
The evidence showed Adam took a drug he had avoided for years and it killed him within an hour.
“Any rational trier of fact could – viewing this evidence in a light most favorable to the prosecution – readily conclude that but for Adam’s taking the heroin on the day of his overdose, he would not have died,” Hawkins wrote.
“Heroin was the most dangerous of the four drugs Adam took, and the evidence overwhelmingly suggested that it was responsible for his overdose.”
An attorney for Seymour didn’t return an inquiry.