Few places are as aggressive in tackling fentanyl distribution as Riverside County, Calif., in prosecuting people who supply fatal doses of fentanyl. Since late 2021, the Riverside County district attorney, Mike Hestrin, has charged 34 suspected fentanyl suppliers with murder and is said to be the first prosecutor in California to achieve a guilty verdict from a jury in a fentanyl-related homicide trial, reports the New York Times. Like Riverside, some other counties — like San Diego and Placer, near Sacramento — that have also brought murder charges against fentanyl suppliers have sizable numbers of conservative-minded voters who tend to favor more punitive approaches to crime.
Even in the liberal bastion of San Francisco, the district attorney’s office has been preparing to investigate fentanyl deaths as possible homicides, which would be a big shift in the city’s approach to drug-related crimes.
Prosecution of street dealers is faulted by some critics as a misguided return to the aggressive approaches of the 1990s, which failed to curb drug use. What’s more, in California, such prosecutions rest on unsettled legal ground, experts say.. Yet even amid such legal uncertainty, such prosecutions are gaining traction across California, a reflection of the public’s anguish over fentanyl, which is a leading cause of death.
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