In 1972, a year after Richard Nixon declared the still-raging war on drugs–America’s longest, costliest, deadliest, most pointless and most damaging to civil liberties–Florida did what it does best: set a new low for uncommon senselessness. It equated heroin-dealing with first degree murder when it results in a user’s overdose death. Other states copied.
No one was prosecuted. Like Nixon’s war, the law was a rhetorical appeal to middle class voters wanting to feel tough. It was targeted at kingpins, not street-level dealers. If kingpins know one thing aside from playing chef to Americans’ limitless appetite for dope, it’s manufacturing distance between producer and user.
Heroin use waned as American servicemen stopped returning from Southeast Asia’s poppy-wreathed killing fields. Drug use didn’t. Cocaine replaced heroin. Oxy replaced cocaine. Fentanyl replaced Oxy. The more states adopted death-by-dealing laws, the more addicts died. Florida harshed up its laws in the 1990s and 2000s. Substance abusers’ death rates spiked–from 6.4 deaths per 100,000 Floridians in 1999 to 25 by 2017. Naturally, the state dusted off the 1972 law and expanded it to include half a dozen drugs, including fentanyl.
This time prosecutions followed quickly. Kingpins still eluded capture. But law enforcement fed dockets and TV cameras with low-level dealers and addicts too stupefied by their disease to know when they’re playing Russian roulette. Addiction deaths in Florida rose to nearly 38 per 100,000 by 2021. If charging addicts and street dealers with murder was intended to be a deterrent, it clearly was having the opposite effect.
Lawmakers too stupefied by their own bad faith decided the murder law wasn’t harsh enough. Last year they changed the law yet again to make it easier to prosecute. It was a two-word change. For example, fentanyl doesn’t have to be the proven or “proximate” cause of death anymore to charge murder. It only has to be “a substantial factor” in the cause of death. “Proximate” was vague enough. “Substantial,” at least in legal language, is a slither of subjectivity.
I don’t think prosecutors would apply the same reasoning to death by Taser, for example, if a Taser jolt was merely a “substantial factor” in the death of a person who suffered from a heart condition. Cops and stun-gun manufacturers fought that line of blame very hard to defeat lawsuits. Prosecutors have now embraced that exact reasoning as the law gave up all pretenses of scientific proof in favor of judgment calls.
That’s not the worst part of the law. The removal of premeditation, a fundamental tenet behind first-degree murder, is. Forgive the resort to Latin but the only two Latin words I know and the only two Latin words anyone needs to know to understand criminal law are mens rea, which can crudely be translated as the “guilty mind.” The words refer to the intent of the defendant. Intent defines the level of prosecution. If John set out to inject Frank with fentanyl intending to kill him, then of course it’s premeditated. It’s first degree murder. But if John was too negligent, too stoned to know what he was doing when he injected Frank, he was certainly reckless, but he wasn’t committing a premeditated murder. Manslaughter certainly. But not murder.
Fifteen to 30 years in prison for manslaughter is not a minor penalty. Notably, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office has charged manslaughter in such cases only for the grand jury, juiced by the State Attorney’s office to up the charge (there are no defense attorneys in the room during grand jury proceedings).
Most of the time defendants plead out and end up with sentences of decades in prison. Even those have generally been outrageously excessive. Occasionally, defendants gamble. Three cases have gone to trial in Flagler County. I covered all three.
Give credit to juries. They can sometimes see through the law’s kangaroo furs. One ended with an acquittal for the obvious reason that the fatal drugs couldn’t be traced to the defendant. (He was sentenced to five years in prison anyway on other charges, because there’s nothing like the wounded vanity of a prosecutor.) Another ended with a manslaughter conviction, 30 years, extended to 40 when the judge decided to tack on an additional sentence on an unrelated charge to run consecutively, instead of the usual concurrence.
Last month, with the dirty dishwater stains of the new law helping, a jury found a defendant, Brian Pirraglia, guilty as charged and for the first time in Flagler County history, the resulting sentence was life in prison without parole.
I have too much regard for the court and its officers to call it a travesty of justice, and prosecutors have told me that they don’t like trying these cases. They are only the law’s willing executioners. That doesn’t change the outcome. Brian Pirraglia was not an upstanding citizen. He apparently robbed his “best friend” Brian O’Shea after he allegedly killed him with a shot of fentanyl. But aside from the not-so-minor fact that O’Shea’s role either in having Pirraglia inject him, or injecting himself with Pirraglia’s dose, seemed to have been irrelevant to prosecutors and the jury, sentencing a man to life in prison without parole for reckless stupidity is its own crime. It adds to the casualties of a war on drugs discredited the day it was declared, it mocks our sense of justice, it is cruel, and it is unusual.
Law enforcement officers, including our sheriff, repeatedly say we’re not going to arrest our way out of this addiction crisis. They’re right. But the law disagrees, and it’s not as if sheriffs’ and police officers’ lobby groups are beating down lawmakers’ doors to push for more humane, less punishing and less expensive alternatives.
Arrests and convictions never cease. Nor do deaths: 107,000 in 2023. There is no deterrence, no reason, no justice. There is vengefulness. It’s a good feeling to some when that guilty verdict rings out in the courtroom. I’ve felt it myself. But it’s the judicial system’s version of a shot of fentanyl, a high as deceptive as it is fleeting. A man has died. Another man’s life is over. No point to either, and neither will stop the carnage. This is not deterrence. It is not justice. It is vengefulness. It is nihilism in law.
Pierre Tristam is the editor of FlaglerLive. A version of this piece aired on WNZF.
Jjb says
This is exactly what they should be charged with.
Injustice says
Thank you for writing this article. It’s so easy to sit and judge others from our living room couches in our own glass houses and the comments I’ve read in regards to this case have been more than disgusting and severely misplaced. The definition of first degree murder is the absolute intent and/or premeditation to end someone’s life. Someone tell me how the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Pirraglia planned to murder his best friend because I can’t find one shred of evidence that does. Did he do a really shitty thing while under the influence of an extremely powerful narcotic clearly not in his right thinking mind? Absolutely. Does he deserve to go to jail? Probably. And if we are to charge those who gave and/or sold narcotics to someone who overdoses on those same narcotics and dies then why aren’t we prosecuting the doctors who prescribe these medications to patients who die because of them? Why are we only going after other addicts? The sad awful truth here and in many of these cases is that the person who died made the choice to use those drugs knowing the risk of dying from doing so. Nobody forced Brian OShea to use drugs that day. He was grown adult who made the conscious decision while completely sober to seek out the drug that ultimately killed him. Why hasn’t the dealer of those same drugs been charged in his death as well? They know who he is. He was brought from his own prison cell to Flagler County for this trial. Was it wrong for Mr. Pirraglia to rob his friend after he overdosed? Of course it was. But know if it had been someone else other than Brian Pirraglia, that person under the influence of fentanyl and doing what addicts with that strong of an addiction do….they would have robbed him too. Because that’s just what people addicted to such strong narcotics do. It doesn’t make it right at all, it’s not ok, there’s no excuse. But it doesn’t make it murder either. But if this is how society and the criminal justice system is going to deal with situations such as this then tell me why the boyfriend of the girl who died on her bedroom floor next to him wasnt charged with her murder? In fact, he wasn’t charged with anything and her death gets swept under the rug, no one to blame….but her. Tell me why one of the witnesses in this case, Stephanie Ramundo, who’s own house was raided where trafficking amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamine, pills, and a whole slough of other narcotics were found hasn’t been charged with the death of the barely 21 year old kid who left her house after purchasing fentanyl, walked to the park around the corner, and died sitting at a table with his head laid on his arms as if he was just sleeping just hours later and wasnt found until the next morning…and the cops watching her house who gave the call to shut her drug house down watched that kid leave her house knowing he purchased drugs and not one thought to at least go check on him….why aren’t we charging them with culpable negligence for his death? I’m sure it wasn’t the first time they saw him at her house. They did nothing to prevent his death. Shouldn’t they be held responsible too? If our justice system is going to go after the Brian Pirraglias of the drug world they can’t pick and choose whoever they want to make an example out of. They need to do it the same for every one of these situations. Not just the ones they feel slighted by because when they raided Mr. Pirraglia’s house and Sheriff Staly gloated about the 900 some grams of fentanyl they found in his residence and plastered this poison peddler all over the media…I don’t recall him doing the same when the truth came out that there never was any 900 some grams fentanyl found, only a big canister of straight protein powder and nothing else. I don’t recall hearing any apologies for making that assumption and being completely wrong. And I don’t recall all those people commenting the terrible and accusatory comments deeming him to hell apologizing for that mistake either. Nor any apologies to all the other people wrongly accused of having drugs they never did. Forgive me for running off on a tangent but hopefully I’ve made some sort of point or maybe changed someone’s judgemental mind.
Jane Gentile Youd says
Thank you ‘Injustice’ for expressing my exact sentiments. Life in Florida is becoming scary; I feel like I am living in a funny farm with lunatics in charge of my welfare. It is frightening if such an ‘injustice is not reversed upon appeal. Scary…a willing victim -I wonder if he will be charged as a co-conspirator post mortem.
JC says
Sorry but the crime fits. The dealer killed the person, the end.
Take a good look says
Pierre you couldn’t be more right!
Kc says
How many people have been charged in Flagler for the overdose death of a black or Hispanic person?
Jason says
The people dealing these drugs should absolutely be charged. They are ruining our communities and peoples lives. I never thought I’d hear people defending drug dealers actions but here we are.
Pierre Tristam says
I don’t know how you interpret manslaughter and 15 to 30 years in prison, or a more just and legal reading of premeditation (which protects us all) as “defending drug dealers,” but here we are.
Jason says
When you take into consideration the entire ecosystem of how drugs are produced, transported, sold to dealers, cut with other drugs such as fentanyl, sold to users and lower dealers, cut again, sold, along with what crimes the people actually using these drugs commit to obtain more drugs then I’m genuinely surprised to see anyone advocating for lesser charges.
I’m sick of tired of seeing people defend this ecosystem and the ultimate tragedies that result from it. If it were up to me I’d give every last one of them the death penalty because that’s exactly what they gave society.
Pierre Tristam says
None of what you describe in the dealership wagon is acceptable. Of course it’s ruinous and criminal. But to go from there to equating the user with a crime worthy of death is an astounding leap. Punishment is not helping. Criminalizing addiction makes matters worse: the death toll has only increased, the costs to society, from policing to judicial to carceral, are more than we pay for national defense, when a fraction of the cost could be spent to more beneficial use if we accepted addiction as a disease first and last, not a crime. There is a share of responsibility in inflicting harm on others by enabling overdoses, and the piece addresses that: no one is willing to simply immunize everyone from prosecution. But what you’re describing is more along the lines of Sharia justice, such as it is, and once we go down that path, then why stop at life in prison, or even executions? Why not cut off dealers’ hands and arms, why not torture them, considering the harm they inflict? We go down that path, there’s no room for common sense and humaneness anymore, there’s only vindictiveness and, when we think of the 100,000 and more people now dying every year from drugs, genocidal waste. I think Dan is much closer to the truth, and to reality, which he’s lived.
JC says
I like how Singapore handles their drug issue. Get caught with drugs or even deal with it, automatic death sentence by hanging.
Some of the Asian Immigrants who came to America and later became US Citizens that I spoken to thought our drug laws aren’t harsh enough, and strong punishment should be against everyone on the food chain. From the dealers/makers to the users, no middle ground. Of course Singapore isn’t a real democracy if you study the country enough, but the people there did give up their freedoms for security so there’s that.
Ug says
In simple terms, if you have cancer you don’t rehabilitate it, you cut it out at the source to prevent further infection, you don’t hope for the best when your dealing with something that will kill, you aggressively attack. People like pirraglia are a cancer on society that needs to be removed and discarded. So yea here we are. A society forced to carry the burden of people who choose to be nothing but a drain. Mistakes are things that people learn from, when you just continue the same cycle no matter the resources at your disposal than people like that would be better served as paper weights in the form of an urn.
Skibum says
While I have some compassion and sympathy for those who have fallen into the depths of drug addiction and need help, which many of them will not admit to or try to get, I share NO sympathy or compassion for anyone who’s goal in life is to profit financially by selling and distributing illegal drugs to others. Whether it is a stranger or a “friend”, you really have to be a low life to have no concern about another person’s wellbeing or how they will or will not be able to handle drugs provided by that person. Take your own risk by using illegal drugs, but freely putting another person in jeopardy of losing their life by giving or selling illegal drugs to someone, then YES I believe anyone should assume that there is the possibility of death resulting from providing illegal drugs. If a jury believes that such an individual is guilty of 1st degree murder in such a case, then the jury has spoken. If the jury does not agree, then so be it. I have no tolerance for those who deal drugs and prey on those who are addicted just for profit.
Dan says
People that sell drugs should not be charged with first- degree murder. All these people in the comments saying they should clearly have never had a loved one dealing with addiction.
My family is full of addicts. All of us are addicted to something. Some are alcoholics. Some are drug addicts. Some addicted to pain pills. Some can’t stop gambling. Some are sex addicts. When I saw everyone, I mean everyone…aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, parents, etc. We are the perfect family to qualify that there is an addiction gene.
I was an alcoholic at 19. I took drugs and pills. My life was a mess. I was going through things that no one understood or could help me with. One day, I met a girl. We started dating, despite my problems, and we fell in love. After I had a meltdown, where I laid down in the middle of a busy road, ready to die for the millionth time, she gave me an ultimatum. It woke me up. I got help. I couldn’t lose the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. I haven’t had a drink, a pill harder than Advil, or any drugs for over 27 years. We’re celebrating our 30th anniversary next year.
People think punishment is the answer. It’s not. Love. Support. Encouragement. Patience. If someone buys drugs, they are buying drugs. The seller isn’t forcing them to buy them or take them or visit someone else for more. No one forced me to buy from four dealers in one day when I tried to die. It wasn’t their fault. I went looking. I found what I wanted. If I would’ve died, my death would’ve been my fault.
We need more open and honest communication about drugs, mental health, addiction, and how we help people in need. These people, the sellers and the buyers, are not the enemy. This is an issue where pointing fingers helps no one. No one should be embarrassed to seek help and it should be affordable. We have a mental health crisis in this country and a people that would rather jail (and judge) others than help them. That needs to change. My cousin went to jail for making, selling, and using meth. He was one of the biggest dealers where he lived. He did his time. When he got out, he relapsed in two weeks. They never helped him with his real problem, his addiction. The recidivism is high when you jail sellers and buyers because they’re not receiving the help they need.
Nancy N says
Thank you for sharing your story. Allow me to add to your cousin’s sad story…that once you’ve got a felony record, no one will hire you for real work, so many people fall back into committing crimes (like dealing) because it’s the only way to make money. And yeah, the carceral state claims they do all sorts of things for addicts and people with mental health issues (who make up the vast majority of inmates)…but in reality, all they do is send them back on the street with more mental health issues than they started their sentence with.
Skibum says
Dan, with your family addiction history I am very surprised at your defense of those who prey on and sell drugs to addicts like you have in your family. The drug dealers, NOT the ones who are addicted, should be paying a much higher price for the continuation of addiction, don’t you think? It makes absolutely no sense to me that you would be promoting lesser consequences for those scumbags who are making people’s lives worse, including potentially YOUR family members! Over many, many decades of personally dealing with so many more drug offenders than I could possibly recall, I know for a fact that when arrested for being under the influence of drugs, most of the offenders I dealt with would say they wished they could overcome their addiction and get “straight”. It is the illegal drug dealers who make certain most users DO NOT ever get over their addiction, and it is done for pure profit and greed. And you want to defend those low lifes and say the legal consequences should be more lenient??? Wow! Talk about backwards thinking… sorry, it makes no sense to me at all unless the same family members you spoke about in your comment are not only using illegal drugs, but in the business of selling and providing those illegal drugs to others. Then it would make perfect sense to want to protect them.
celia pugliese says
Such a sad ending of this tragedy and in spite of years of drugs infiltrated and used in our country we still do not have the needed free rehab programs available to those considered indigent in financial distress without family help
Ray W, says
For centuries, the law has recognized a difference between malum in se crimes and malum prohibitum crimes.
Malum in se crimes, such as murder, arson, and theft, and compound common law crimes such as burglary, sexual battery, and robbery, were deemed under the law to have malice inhering the act. Malice in the law has been defined as ill-will or hatred directed to the person or property of another. At one time, these were called specific intent crimes, but legislatures have been softening the boundaries between specific intent crimes and general intent crimes since the release of the Model Penal Code in 1965. Some legal commenters argue that the phrase malum in se no longer has much meaning in today’s laws.
Malum prohibitum crimes do not have malice inhering in the act. The malice becomes prohibited by law after a legislative body decides to prohibit a once legal act. For example, Coca Cola, for its first 15 years or so, contained ecgonine, a derivative of coca leaves and a precursor compound for cocaine. Coca leaves had not yet been declared illegal by any legislative body and Coca Cola was advertised for its medicinal value. In time, a method was devised remove ecgonine from coca leaves and Coca Cola no longer used ecgonine in its formula. It was only after Coca Cola removed the ecgonine that legislatures began declaring cocaine, either by possession or by sale, illegal. Selling a controlled substance is a malum prohibitum crime.
In a more recent example, once legislature began issuing driving permits, driving on a suspended license originally was only a civil infraction. In time, legislatures all over the country began deciding to criminalize the conduct, and it suddenly became a malum prohibitum crime to drive while license suspended.
Vehicular homicide, a crime based on culpable negligence, is a malum prohibitum crime, not a malum in se crime. Simple negligence in the personal injury context and, therefore, the foundation of so many personal injury cases, has never been defined as criminal.
Enhanced negligence, or “culpable” negligence, if you will, was defined by the legislature as a crime to address egregious forms of negligence, which by definition are still not intentional crimes. This is why crimes based on egregiously negligent conduct carry prison sentences of no more than 15 years in Florida, absent an aggravating factor such as the egregiously negligent death of a law enforcement officer.
Historically, laws in the United States did not permit imposition of the death penalty for malum prohibitum crimes. Sale of an illegal substance has always been considered a malum prohibitum crime, not a malum in se crime. It is a relatively new occurrence that sale of a controlled substance can result in the death penalty. Many argue that opening this door will lead to more malum prohibitum crimes being declared worthy of the death penalty.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Perhaps there will come a time when a Republican legislature, no longer bound by true conservative values, will declare Democratic Party values as malum prohibitum crimes. This happens in autocratic political systems all the time. Should a Russian citizen speak out against the war in the Ukraine, he or she faced severe criminal penalties, all because the Putin-dominated Duma declared opposition to the war criminal. I know that a number of the more gullible FlaglerLive commenters already think that the Democratic Party should be abolished. Putinesque in their world view, any act that stands in their way should be illegal, and anyone who is convicted in the death of another should be executed. Just kill them all, they intone. That the U.S.S.C. has written that the death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst murders means nothing to the clueless among us. Just kill them all, they say. The ancient law of the debt of blood vengeance maintains a tenacious hold on the thoughts of so many.
As Mr. Tristam quoted in yesterday’s discussion, a Senator opined during floor debate in 1974 that every human being has a spark of vengeance in his or her soul. I argue why let that ancient and enduring spark of vengeance extinguish God’s spark of the divine that also exists in everyone’s soul?
Endless dark money says
Solves nothing just ruins two lives instead of one. Which is worse od or getting raped? How many people in big pharma has gone to jail for killing people? Remember corporations are people….or is that only for campaign contributions?
Hmmm says
Nice article. I have 2 issues with this topic…
1.You can possibly get less time for shooting someone vs being an addict and giving another addict a fatal dose of drugs.
2. All the investigating that goes into these cases, an addict goes to prison for life or the equivalent in years. But its coming from somewhere. From what I see, its not getting traced back far enough to the source. The man that just got sentenced to life, who did he get it from? And where did he get it from?
Skibum says
Being an addict and personal use of illegal substances is completely different than someone else selling or providing illegal substances to another person. I don’t see how you could possibly justify those two circumstances being the same and acquainting the same penalties for both. It is almost like saying someone committing suicide by their own means is no different than someone else encouraging, and then providing a gun for someone to shoot themself in the head, and then saying “I didn’t do it, it was their own doing”. Many addicts end up dead from illegal substances sold or provided to them by others. A person who provided a potentially deadly dose of illegal drugs should not be allowed to receive leniency when it was their actions that caused the untimely death of another person, whether or not the person who died was categorized as an “addict”.
Just a thought says
You touch on a good point. Person A gives person B a pistol to shoot themselves. Has person A ever been convicted of first degree murder?
Rld says
Yea wouldn’t that be called an accessory 🧐just a thought
Just a thought says
But not first degree murder like these drug dealers are being charged. I do not see much of a distinction.
Skibum says
I don’t know of any other cases where there were similar circumstances resulting in a 1st degree murder conviction, where premeditation must be proved. There was a well publicized criminal case where a young woman was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for encouraging him to kill himself by sending him multiple text messages:
https://people.com/crime/michelle-carter-trial-gallery-key-moments-conrad-roy-suicide/
PJP says
It’s inspiring to read the intelligent responses on this issue. This horrible Florida Statute 782.04(1)(a)3a, Capital murder by distribution of controlled substance. No intent needed. If jury unanimously finds defendant guilty, mandatory life in prison sentence.
For the record, Pirraglia did not sell him drugs, the source of fatal dose remains unknown. They were both long time addicts, several rehabs, always relapsing; friends over 20 yrs. Pirraglia called 911 & started CPR. As for the money, that was secured in safe to get water turned back on in lieu of rent.
One reason all the time and $$ spent by law to investigate and prosecute: the mother of victim insistent to blame Pirraglia.
A says
Coming from the the mother that enabled him to continue to be a waste of human space who didn’t even have the decency to call her own “friend” and let her know that her son just died at the hands of your own child, shifting blame to a grieving mother is beyond disgusting and further shows how out of touch with the reality that your son is a worthless human being who deserves the same fate as the victim in this case the only injustice aside from another pointless death is that tax payers are now saddled with taking care of a disgusting waste of space ✌️
PJP says
A. You have totally missed the point and apparently got some misinformation. If you care to learn more about this endemic that’s destroying our country and is also a public health crisis, Fentanyl Nation, by Ryan Hampton, is a good start.
A says
As someone who struggled with opioid addiction myself I can assure you the point wasn’t missed on me, what misinformation are you speaking of, bc his mother is the one who said you didn’t even have the decency to call her, or are you still blinded to the fact that your son is in fact a drain on society. My information is factual but please show me the flaws or misinformation…the only opinion is that your enablement as a parent is the real problem, but I’m sure that’s not how your raising the child he had taken from him by the state 🧐…your inability to recognize that society isn’t to blame but rather a lifetime of enablement from a parent who doesn’t see what is right infront of her as the people closest to him die…a mirror may be where you should look in order to see where the problem started.
PJP says
First of all, the victim’s mother and I were never friends. I met her once in early 2000s; talked to her once, circa 2015, when he came to this city, in reference to her son’s previous TBI. Offered resources as I’m a retired RN that specialized in catastrophic injuries and TBIs.
At the time of his OD, I offered to police to try and find her contact info, they declined.
I think it’s ignorant to make presumptions about me.
Drug addiction has a genetic component and perhaps, you haven’t had to deal with one of your own.
A says
Food for thought do you also consider cyanide to be an “endemic” it is just as lethal and even more readily available… of course not bc if people started shooting up with cyanide and dying, you’d think well that was stupid. Of course it’s going to kill you….please explain the difference addiction much like recovery starts with a choice it isn’t societies job to compel the many simply do to the unequivocal stupidity of the few play stupid games win stupid prizes. It is this enabling attitude where nothing is ever his fault that you encouraged that has led to this point but please keep enlightening us with how it isn’t his fault ✌️
Land of no turn signals says says
Feeding,housing,dental,medical for any of these dirt bags with my tax money is not what I call justice.